


One Last Dance

by Evilpixie



Series: DC Omegaverse [5]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Drama, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Family Drama, M/M, Marriage, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:34:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 43
Words: 180,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3409061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilpixie/pseuds/Evilpixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Bruce is a pregnant omega and Clark his alpha mate. But when a mysterious criminal organisation bent on destroying their union comes to Gotham bonds are tested and the pair learn nothing lasts forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He was alone.

 

“Mr Wayne! Mr Wayne!”

 

“Wayne!”

 

“Bruce! Bruce Wayne!”

 

“Mr Wayne!”

 

Bruce wasn’t sure he liked being alone anymore.

 

“Just a second, Mr Wayne!”

 

“Over here, Mr Wayne!”

 

“Mr Wayne!”

 

“Bruce!”

 

There was a time, years ago, where he would have made the excuse that alone was better.

 

“One moment, Mr Wayne!”

 

“A statement, Wayne?!”

 

“Mr Wayne!”

 

“Wayne!”

 

It was a lie. Alone wasn’t better. It was safer. A way to mitigate and minimise potential pain. One of the many lies he’d clung to in his youth to help justify the simple unfairness of the world and the insanity of this war against it.

 

“Please, Mr Wayne!”

 

“Bruce!”

 

“Mr Wayne!”

 

“Bruce Wayne!”

 

He’d forced himself to believe he didn’t need anyone else until his solitude was inevitably interrupted. First by Alfred’s persistent and pesky need to stop him self-destructing and then the others, one by one, like meteorites crash landing into his life. Dick, Jason, Tim… Clark. His family. His pack. His… everything. All of them.

 

“Mr Wayne!”

 

“You look wonderful, Bruce!”

 

“Where have you been, Wayne?!”

 

“Wayne!”

 

No matter how impractical it may have been, no matter how much he himself had insisted on it being too risky, a small part of him wouldn’t have minded some of them with him that night as he elbowed through the ocean of the reporters and mounted the stairs that lead up to Wayne Enterprises head office. A looming pillar of reflective windows.

 

“Mr Wayne?!”

 

“Gotham Gazette, Mr Wayne!”

 

“What are you wearing, Bruce?!”

 

“Mr Wayne!”

 

It would have been nice, as he moved to stand behind the standing podium, not to be alone.

 

A furious kick against the inner wall of his abdomen interrupted his thoughts.

 

Bruce’s lip curled and a hand fell to involuntarily touch the swollen shape of his pregnancy. _Sorry, pup. I know. You’re here. You’ve got my back._ He covered his face in one of Bruce Wayne’s gaping smiles. _I’m not alone._

 

The crowd dipped a little closer to quiet as he faced the creative collection of microphones and looked out over the heads of the press. It took a moment to construct his character; Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy, the world’s richest unmated omega, the city’s favourite scandal, and soon to be the face of the next step in Gotham’s ongoing story.

 

What would such a man say? He started with one word. “Hello.”

 

A murmur of laughter and some playful responses echoed up from the audience.

 

“I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long,” he went on. “I’ve, eh, had a hard time finding clothes that fit.”

 

Another collection of laughs and a few shouted questions from the press.

 

“When are you due, Mr Wayne?!”

 

“How are you feeling?!”

 

“Is it a boy or a girl?!”

 

No one was brave enough to voice the question everyone was thinking. _Who’s the sire?_ They thought they knew the answer already. Bruce Wayne was an infamous party boy, had a reputation for one night stands long before his sexual caste – his omegahood – was revealed, and had already shown up with one illegitimate child just over a year earlier. The absence of an alpha or visible bond mark on his neck was yet another incriminating detail. It was not surprising, in their mind, that such an omega would show up with an unexpected pregnancy. If one illegitimate child why not two? It was entirely possible given his lifestyle.

 

Either he had enough unprotected sex to get pregnant off heat – abnormal but possible – or he shared his heat with such an unsavoury character, someone so far below his rank, that even he wasn’t admitting it. Some gossip journalists had already speculated as to a payoff of some kind; money fed to an unnamed alpha in order to keep them quiet, out of the public eye, and away from Bruce Wayne’s already infamous love child. Other more radical grassroots journalists had latched onto the ugly third option; rape. Given his fame, caste, and the fact he was still having heats he could have been targeted and wasn’t admitting it publicly due to a history of being abused by the media.

 

No one, so far, had guessed the truth. A hidden alpha. A secret mate. A long lasting love affair hidden from the world by a smear of concealer over the bond mark on his neck. Kept in the dark for the safety of the man he loved. A man lost somewhere in the crowd of reporters massing on the stairs below him.

 

“You know,” he began in earnest. “My life has changed a lot this last year. But it’s been a good kind of change. Moving forward in ways I never expected to.” He touched his protruding belly. “Some of it’s been hard. Giving up polo.” _Giving up the cowl._ “And, as many of you know, my son is getting married shortly.” _Both of them._ “To an alpha, of all things.” _To each other, of all things_. “But as hard as it can be we all do need to move forward.” He smiled around at his audience. “Even me.”

 

They smiled back. Most of them already perfectly bored. Good.

 

“Moving on and letting go of the past has always been a challenge for me,” he went on. “In a lot of ways.” The truth. Raw and real. “Or," he quickly diluted it, "at least, that’s what my therapist says anyway.”

 

A polite collection of soft laughter.

 

“And so,” he licked his lips, “I've decided, it’s time for me to step forward, come out of the shadows, and tell you all the truth; or at least as much of it as you can believe.”

 

He let those words hang, let himself regret the magnitude of what he was doing for a moment, and leant against the sides of the podium. The paper in front of him was blank. A prop.

 

“Mr Wayne?”

 

“Mr Wayne, are you…?”

 

“What is he saying?”

 

“I fund Batman,” he confessed.

 

Silence. It was the first time he had heard it since stepping out of the car. Like the breath before a storm.

 

Then it ended.

 

“Mr Wayne! Mr Way—!”

 

People conversed loudly among themselves, reporters relayed the news, and multiple voices vied for his attention. He ignored them and spoke directly into the closest microphone; his own voice rising above the storm of noise. “Since my parents’ murder thirty eight years ago I have stood against crime in this city. The Wayne Foundation combats poverty, the root of crime, and I continue to contribute finically to the GCPD to aid them in the pursuit of crime. I don’t want any other child to have to go through what I did. Batman shares with me that sense of justice. So I help him.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “I am not able to do what he does but, through my private funds, I have sustained The Batman and now that he has been re-deputised by our police commissioner I want to step forward and publicly declare my personal and finical support of his efforts and those of his allies.”

 

He scanned the crowd. Saw a red faced photographer grinning from ear to ear, a man glaring black death at him from the street side, and a security guard blinking at him owlishly.

 

“And,” he continued. “Furthermore, on behalf of Batman, I would also like to announce the future of the ongoing war against crime, both in the city of Gotham and all around the world.” He stood on the switch at the base of the podium. Watched as the street side lit up around them. “Together, let’s move forward to create a future where our children won’t have to live in fear of crime. A future where criminals fear us. A future where we are Batman.”

 

It was overly theatrical, grandiose, and garish. But it was also Gotham and this was how you got her attention.

 

Bat-signals splashed against the nearby buildings, stamped the clouds with their iconic black wings, and lit up the little stage with the infamous brand above two words. _Batman Incorporated._

 

_What do you think, pup? Will that keep them entertained for a while?_

 

The girl kicked at him again. A small sharp prod.

 

 _No,_ he agreed. _Perhaps not. But it might keep them scared._

 

He let the press shout questions at him for a moment longer, kept smiling as cameras flashed, and finally spoke his dismissal into the nearest microphone.

 

“Now, forgive me, but I’m freezing so I really must go inside. Thank you though for meeting me here.”

 

He turned towards the building just as a swarm of reporters overspilt their lines and engulfed him again. The faces, he noticed, had changed. The gossip columnists squeezed to the back of the flock as others charged in to scoop up the unexpected story. This time he lingered to answer questions, more to get an idea about what direction the press was going to take the story.

 

It wasn’t the one he had hoped for.

 

“Do you know who Batman is?”

 

“How did you two meet?”

 

“How much money do you give him?”

 

Still, he plastered Bruce Wayne’s foppish smile on and answered. “I’ve never seen him without the cowl, he saved me from the Red Hood Gang when I was in my twenties, and not as much as you might think; he prefers designs and technology and the means to build them rather than just cash.” He shrugged. “Whatever he needs. I just pay the bills.”

 

The better questions were fewer and further between but he did hear them.

 

“What does Batman Incorporated mean?”

 

“Are Batman and his affiliates now associated with Wayne Industries?”

 

“Why are you coming forward now?”

 

He answered. “Batman Incorporated is an aggressive initiative that seeks to install a Batman in all the major cities around the world; drawing on the populations of local vigilantes and giving them what they need to operate with the aid of and under the banner of The Batman. As for Wayne Industries, we’ll be working loosely with the organisation to help them however we can in order to further this goal and aid them in the war on crime. I am coming forward now because it is time we change for the better, step forward, and work together to combat this menace.”

 

The last question came from beside him, carrying through the noise despite being spoken in a low friendly voice. “Why do you think Batman is doing this?”

 

He paused, breathed in the mess of scents around him, and turned to look at the other man. Clark smiled secretively at him from under the drape of his fringe, face lit up by the reflected blaze of a nearby bat signal. His suit was old fashioned but clean and crisp enough to blend into the Gotham crowd, eyes an insipid grey behind the lens of his broad rimmed glasses, and his physique was by all appearances less than perfect. But nothing could hide the warm openness of his smile, the neat cleft of his chin, or his hands. Large, deceptively soft, and equipped long lightly tanned fingers like he would expect from an artist.

 

Clark had the most beautiful hands in the world.

 

“I don’t know.” Bruce pretended to ponder the question for a while. “Perhaps he just doesn’t want to be alone anymore.”

 

He sent the man a fluttering smile, squeezed through the last of the news workers, and finally made it to the safety of the front door. A couple of security guards made sure he entered alone, a receptionist stared at him as he passed, and he used the key to unlock the elevator to take him to the top floor. Once there he bypassed his office and went straight into the board room.

 

“Wayne!” Mr Peterson, head of shipping, yelled as he entered. “What the hell was that?!”

 

“I have a proposition to make.”

 

“We heard your damn proposition! The whole planet did!”

 

The other board members watched on. Some nodded, some scowled, and some looked downright confused. Lucius Fox, current CEO, kept his face a diplomatic blank.

 

Peterson. “If you wanted to throw in your lot with a mad man in a bat suit why did you have to drag the company in after you? You’re not the acting CEO anymore. This wasn’t your call!”

 

“This was going to happen, Peterson,” he told him. “Now, I’ve made sure it happens without concessions.”

 

“No! This is not happening,” the man snapped. “Whatever Batman Incorporated is it has nothing to do with Wayne Enterprises.” He turned to the other board members. “I say we clean up this mess straight away; call another press meeting and march Wayne out there so he can tell them this is his idiotic plan and not the company’s.”

 

Fox smiled. “I don’t think Mr Wayne has any intension of going along with such a plan.”

 

“If you refuse this proposition I will reclaim acting control over the company and pass it myself,” Bruce told him coolly. “That’ll take time and you’ll be seen insulting me which will upset omega rights groups, general gossip media, and pro superhero activists.” A hard look. “It’ll damage our stocks.”

 

“You can’t just—he can’t just manipulate us like this!”

 

“Pass it now,” Bruce ploughed on, “declare Wayne Enterprises a finical supporter of The Batman, and we’ll be the first company directly affiliated with the Justice League, through a core member no less.” He let those words settle for a moment. “Even you, Peterson, cannot deny that’ll be an asset.”

 

“Six months ago Batman was a criminal!” The man yelled. “You think helping him will be an asset for our company?”

 

“I think helping him will be a serious blow against organised crime. I’m just putting it into a language you can understand.”

 

The man’s face was red. “We have a right to discuss what happens to this company without being strong armed by… _you!_ ”

 

His eyes narrowed as he glared down at the board member. “That is my name above the door, Peterson.”

 

“And you resigned as CEO for a reason! You were an illegal omega, you’re pregnant without even a _prospective_ mate, and now you suddenly want to affiliate this company with a vigilante? You think following you is really what our investors want? No! They want an income. A stable, reliable, and _large_ income. The reason you stepped down is because they didn’t trust you as CEO once they knew your caste. Now you think they’ll trust you on this?!”

 

“It’s the right thing to do,” Bruce growled, a little more dangerous than was expected from Bruce Wayne’s public persona even within the safety of this building. “It’ll save lives.”

 

“The police save lives! Why are we suddenly responsible—?”

 

“The debate on ethics and moral responsibility can wait for another time,” Fox intervened. “I think we need to take the time to decide what we need to do now.” He looked at Bruce. “It was a bit forward shining a bat symbol against our building. That much we can all agree on. And you probably should have discussed it with us first, Mr Wayne.”

 

“You _should_ have,” Peterson insisted. “There is no probably about it.”

 

“But,” Fox continued calmly. “As it stands, I think we are – as you say – now obliged to set up some kind of affiliation with this new superhero organisation.” His eyes sparkled with an almost boyish mischief. Lucius was, if anything, more excited than him to set up this partnership so he could air test the new bat androids sitting in the basement of the building. He’d been building them for months waiting for the announcement. “Businesswise, that is the only option left to us.”

 

“Charity work is tax free,” Ms Lu, head of finance, pointed out helpfully. “And we can always revoke the agreement if, for whatever reason, Batman loses his deputation again.”

 

“We’ll have to,” Fox agreed. “We cannot be seen to be funding or associating with a criminal.”

 

“Batman has been ducking in and out of legality for years,” Peterson snarled.

 

“Yes,” Fox looked at Bruce. “He’s going to have to stop that.”

 

“I will.”

 

A collective intake of air.

 

Batman dropped from a panel in the ceiling, landed with a snap and flurry of memory cloth, and hugged his cape around him as he slowly straightened. Robin followed. The boy had a long katana hitched high on his back, a hood over his face, and an angry pout on his lips.

 

“We’re busy,” Robin said sharply.

 

“We have a moment,” Batman corrected him. Looked at Bruce, gaze unreadable under the eerie shine of the cowl’s build in lenses. “Quite the speech, Mr Wayne.”

 

“ _Tt!_ ” The boy strode across the room to glare out the window, gloved hands clasped behind his back. “If you’ve got something to say, say it fast, Batman. I don’t want to waste time here.”

 

The board members looked at the duo in shock; Lu staring stunned at the boy, and Peterson gaping at the intimidating shape of Batman standing at the foot of the long meeting table and throwing a daunting double pronged shadow. Dick always was good at that. Despite his claim to be eager to shed the weight of the cape and cowl he knew how to use them; how to stand, speak, and move like Batman. Whatever else Dick might say, for all intent and purposes, he was the caped crusader. Damian was… different. A new kind of Robin. But it worked and by the time the two left, less than three minutes later, the board of Wayne Enterprises was convinced.

 

It was a temporary patch up to a larger problem. Peterson was right. Batman Incorporated would destabilise Wayne Industries stock prices and invite a level of public scrutiny everyone could have done without. He’d spent the last five months setting up Batman Incorporated, he believed in it, but he wasn’t so idealistic as to think there was nothing dangerous about the concept. He was laying open something he knew would have been discovered, reaching for more money than he ever had given to the mission before, and hoping the public face of a worldwide Batman organisation would be enough to battle enemies bigger than he had ever faced without the backup of the Justice League.

 

Enemies like the elusive Leviathan organisation that was springing up all around the world.

 

He was risking a lot to spread Batman beyond the walls of Wayne Manor but it was a risk he needed to take. He needed to stop facing inwards and promising himself it was optimal. He needed to ensure his legacy lived on without condemning his pack to it. He needed to make things better; because he wasn’t alone anymore, this wasn’t his own hopeless hateful war anymore, and he wasn’t going to die on the streets of Gotham. That plan had fallen through. He'd survived. Now, he needed to live. He needed to be a better father this time around, a better leader, and a better man.

 

He was going to be better.

 

Batman was going to be better.

 

It was all going to be better from now on.

 

It had to be.

 

Bruce escaped the boardroom as soon as was socially reasonable, ducked into his office, and locked the door. His face hurt as he relaxed Bruce Wayne’s fluttering airheaded smile – persistent even when pulling strings at the office – and his back and ankles were starting their usual light but merciless throb. A now daily torture.

 

_I’ll be glad when I don’t have you on my bones, pup._

 

A knock at the glass.

 

Clark was hovering secretively in the shadows of the gothic stonework out his window. He was still dressed as a reporter but had shed the glasses and raked his hair back from his brow. Unobstructed his face was sharp and stunning; eyes an exotic unearthly alien blue.

 

“It’s open.”

 

Clark tested the latch, entered with a gust of icy wind, and closed it behind him. “You’re a genius.”

 

“Huh.” Bruce straightened and made his way across the room to sit behind his desk. “Don’t pretend to be surprised. You knew what I was doing.”

 

“But now you’ve actually done it.” Clark smiled as he puffed out his cheeks, a bemusing combination. “You’re changing the shape of superheros.”

 

“Superhero groups have existed for decades,” Bruce retaliated.

 

The alpha shook his head. “Not with corporate funding, a single franchise, or global agents.”

 

“Yes they have.”

 

“Not like _this._ ”

 

“That’s a very vague statement,” Bruce said dryly.

 

“You’re a genius,” the man insisted. “A terrifying, unstoppable, genius.” A rueful smile. “I should have known being pregnant wouldn’t stop you.”

 

“It has stopped me,” Bruce told him. “I wouldn’t be moving at all if my feet got their way.” It was a gross exaggeration but it got the response he wanted.

 

Clark was instantly kneeling before him and working his shoes off. _God,_ he loved seeing the man kneel. He was one of the most powerful things on the planet, _an alpha_ , and he’d never hesitated to submit to Bruce. Because that was what he was doing. Clark knew what getting onto his knees meant, he knew what he looked like, and knew what it did to Bruce. Blue eyes watching under half lowered lids, lips tugging toward a licentious smile, and fingers tracing spiral patterns into the skin of his feet. It was an erotic reversal they both enjoyed, a taboo treasure, and what had kept them tethered together long before love, need, and their mutual mate bond – a sexual hormonal addiction – had committed them in ways Bruce could never have been prepared for.

 

Clark began to massage his feet.

 

Bruce flinched, groaned, and leant forward go seize the other man’s shirt front.

 

“Hey… don’t you want…?”

 

He pulled him up, trusting Clark to take to the air rather than lean on his body, and brought their lips together.

 

There. _There._ He felt their bond pulse between them. As deep as bones, as ingrained as blood, as essential as breath. A mutual hormonal addiction that stitched them together, possessed them, and heightened but didn’t define the force of emotion flowing between them like an impossible two way river. Raw, real, and with roots deep enough to wrap around and penetrate his brain, heart, and some deeper part of him he couldn’t name.

 

“Goddamned perfect bastard,” he rasped as their lips parted. “You goddamned perfect…”

 

“Beautiful…” Clark purred in response, groping greedily for a better embrace. “You’re so…”

 

They kissed again. Open. Deeper.

 

“… and a _genius_. I still can’t believe—”

 

Bruce let his voice ring with disapproval. “You’re going to write another biased article about me, aren’t you?”

 

“I’m independent now,” Clark reminded him. “I can write biased if I want.” Spicy smelling breath ghosting past Bruce’s lips. A fierce erotic tug.

 

“Except this article is for the Daily Planet,” Bruce pointed out, voice husky. “You told me you were going to send it to Perry.” He lent in closer. “You can’t make people think you support me.”

 

Clark was floating over him, arms resting on those of the chair, and shoulders deliciously broad. “Why?” He near whispered. “Because Clark Kent can’t _possibly_ believe what you’re doing is amazing without secretly also loving you?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Bruce. I could hate you and still think what you’re doing is utterly incredible especially after all the shit society has put you thr—”

 

Bruce arched forward to taste his lips, tongue, and the inside of his cheek again. After that everything went as it should. They shed their clothes, somehow found their way to the sofa at the other end of his office, and then the other man was inside him.

 

“ _Ah…”_

 

“Is it…?”

 

“Yes…” he purred.

 

Bruce knelt on the cushions and pulled Clark’s arm around his shoulders; keeping the man close and in place as he began to move back onto him. The alpha was over him but that didn’t matter. He didn’t mind being mounted so much anymore. Not by Clark. The man didn’t make it about alphas and omegas; didn’t make it about dominance, submission, or even really sex. He just made it another kind of embrace in which – while pregnant – sex happened to be easiest in. Bruce was grateful.

 

Until recently Bruce hadn’t acknowledged let alone started to put aside his internalised resentment for his sexual caste. It was a messy part of him to unpack; a raw and rotten hatred for everything that made omegas lesser… and for omegas for allowing it to define them. The belief a bitter self-imposed burden he doubted he would ever really fully absolve himself of but, over the last months, Clark had been helping him carry it. Without condescending or judging the man was simply there for him; simply accepting through all that he knew was harder for him as his body changed.

 

“I’m glad,” Clark whispered as they slumped down onto the seats, knotted together, and writhing to kiss each other over Bruce’s shoulder.

 

Between kisses. “You’re… glad?”

 

“That Batman’s not going to be alone anymore,” the man said softly.

 

The girl kicked. Judging by the way Clark moved he’d felt it too.

 

“I don’t think,” Bruce muttered, “any of us have really been alone for a long time. And I don't plan on that changing.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Okay, I seriously have to go now.” Barbara gathered up her bag and pushed herself out of the padded leather armchair. Her hair was a mess of deep red curls, body bundled under a massive hoodie, and boots rimmed with wool. “Dad’s coming over for dinner with Sarah and God knows what I’m going to cook. I’d be surprised if I even found pasta in the pantry.”

 

“Just give them bowls of cereal,” Dick suggested with a wide smile as he pushed himself to his feet beside her. “You could make a buffet. Everything from puffed wheat and cornflakes to coco-pops with chocolate milk. If you do that though you _have_ to invite me.”

 

Her eyebrow arched. “A cereal buffet? What are you, ten years old?”

 

“Not all ten year olds like cereal,” Dick told her gravely.

 

A flicker of a smile. “I’m sure Damian would eat cereal if Alfred made it,” she assured him. “Just like I’m sure Jason wouldn’t mind you not wearing a ring as you just hang out with me.”

 

A long pause. Dick stared at her, smile frozen into place, a hand suddenly feeling disgustingly naked at his side. “Yeah… Yeah I guess…”

 

She studied him, blinked as she realised what the look on his face meant, and stared. “He didn’t get you an engagement ring, did he?”

 

Dick looked at his empty hand and forced a smile. “No… but I’m a beta so I guess it’s not—”

 

“I’m a beta too and I still like the bling,” Barbara told him. “You gave a ring to Kori. You spent _ages_ picking one out. Remember? You were _so_ into it.”

 

He looked down. “Can we not talk about Kori?”

 

“It was a huge deal for you then; huge enough that you got one specially made. Yet you don’t have an engagement ring and neither of you has said anything about wedding rings yet either,” she crossed her arms. “What gives?”

 

“I… I think Jay’s getting rings for the day.”

 

Her eyes widened. “You _think?”_

 

“Rings aren’t that important, are they?” He asked hopelessly. “I mean, Jason’s not very traditional. Does it matter if he doesn’t…?”

 

“It might not matter to him. Does it matter to you?”

 

“I…” he shifted from foot to foot. “Not really.” He lied.

 

“For God’s sake,” the woman took his hand and pulled him over to the window as if removing him from an invisible crowd. “First you say Wayne Manor is fine, then you tell me the honeymoon is downtown Gotham, and now this? I’m your best man, Dick. My job is to make sure you get the wedding you want. I expected a diva. This is _Dick Grayson’s_ wedding. A million broken hearts and all that. What the hell are you doing?”

 

“Look, I know,” he told her. “And you’re the best best man ever.”

 

The woman nodded.

 

“But this is Jason’s wedding too and it already feels like it isn’t. He isn’t inviting _anyone_ , Babs. He hasn’t even picked his best man.”

 

“That’s—”

 

“ _And_ he’s doing it under a fake name.” He tried to make her understand. “If I go in there with a list of demands then I’ll be pushing him out even more. I’ll be making it all about me. It’s got to be about us. ”

 

Voice ringing with disapproval. “And ‘us’ means no rings?”

 

“’Us’ means me not running away with this idea. This isn’t what he had in mind and everything we’ve done so far has been my idea. _Everything_. I don’t want to barge in there and start also demanding diamond rings, or matching suits, or…”

 

“You don’t even have matching suits?!”

 

“Well, they kind of match,” he attempted to soothe her.

 

“How?”

 

“I… well,” he made a face, “they’re matching in the sense that they’re both suits,” he confessed.

 

The woman stared at him. “You’re getting married in a month. You realise that don’t you? You can’t wait for an alpha to develop an interest in the flowers and serviettes because, newsflash, that isn’t going to happen. This is going to be your wedding. You’re going to be commemorating it for years.”

 

“If I survive the honeymoon,” Dick joked.

 

“Which, by the way, I refuse – as the best man representative to a millionaire – to let you honeymoon in Gotham. I booked plane tickets to Cambodia.”

 

Dick blinked. “Cambodia? Like, the South East Asia Cambodia?”

 

Barbara sent him a flat look. “Is there another Cambodia?”

 

“No, but…”

 

“I’ve been told Cambodia had the best beaches in the world to screw on. Except for Thailand. But Thailand’s booked. You’re going to Cambodia.”

 

Worried. “Don’t they have malaria there?”

 

Unwavering. “Don’t you have bug spray?”

 

“Look, Babs,” he tried to reel this conversation back under his control. “I love what you’re doing but, seriously, let me and Jay handle it. I’ll ask about the rings tonight, okay? We’ll sort it out.”

 

She made a sound that said she very much doubted it.

 

“Besides,” he smiled. “I thought you would be busy organising the bachelor party.”

 

“Oh,” her lips curled with an almost wicked glee, her concern melting away for a moment. “It’s organised.”

 

Shocked. “Already?”

 

“I’ve had the venue booked for a month.” She pointed at her chest. “Best best man ever, remember.”

 

“You’re amazing.”

 

“I know.” She looked at her watch. “But, I really need to go now. Talk to him about the rings, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

“ _Seriously._ Do it.” They hugged. “This is your wedding too.”

 

He buried his face in her hair. “I know.” Barbara Gordan’s hair smelt like sweetened peppermint with a dash of lemon grass. It was a scent that hung almost playfully around her, mingled with her own bodily beta aroma, and stayed in his nose after she ended the embrace and left the lavish drawing room with a wave. Like unearthing a forgotten keepsake, inhaling that scent brought up a froth of old memories.

 

They were teenagers when that smell used to stick to Dick’s pillows after she left his bedroom at night. It was summer and he was fifteen when, under his thin sheets inhaling that coy pretty smell, he had kissed her for the first time. Uncertain and slow, a timid and tepid touch of lip on lip. But it had been his first kiss and he wouldn’t let it be a failure. The first time he’d swung on a trapeze he ripped the muscles in his shoulder but still managed to perform a perfect landing and theatrical bow. And so would he with this kiss.

 

It was more than a decade ago now but he remembered it perfectly.

 

His tongue had felt unwieldy and dry but she welcomed it with a fluttering gasp of delight and brought up her hands to stroke his cheeks. Each touch soft, unsure, but also warm and encouraging. He knew, in that moment, that this was her first time too. She was as uncertain as him, as nervous, but as eager to make this work and turn it into something beautiful; a first kiss the kind Hollywood promised. He stole a small amount of comfort from that. At least he wasn’t in this performance alone. He had a partner. And her hair smelt like sweet peppermint.

 

That night they went all the way without even intending to. Her breasts were not quite large enough to fill his palms and poked into him with stern erect nipples, her hips stood square and new; blooming out from her body in the secretive curves of a female beta, and her wonderful smelling hair tumbled across her face in damp red cascades that curled at the end and tickled whenever she leant forward to kiss him. There was no condom. He hadn’t planned on this and hadn’t thought to prepare. But he bottled down the lectures Bruce had given him and ploughed onward. They were both virgins so the chance of SDI was near nothing and were both betas so the chance of impregnation almost equally as unsubstantial. Nothing bad would come out of this. It didn’t seem anything ever could. Not something so surprisingly easy and natural. It was a soft, sweet, share of selves that was coloured but not defined by their simple sexual exploration.

 

She rode him, then he rolled and was on top which freed his hips up in a way that allowed him to enter her deeper. As he came he buried his face in her hair butterflied across the pillows. Inhaled sweet peppermint and lemon grass and smothered the too familiar scent of her betahood.

 

That should have been his first hint. His first inkling that something wasn’t quite right between him and Barbara. A fundamental mismatch. But, in the weeks that followed he called her girlfriend anyway, held her hand, and kissed her under the stairwell in Gotham Academy. He told her he loved her and it wasn’t a lie. He did love Barbara Gordan. And he loved sex. But, he was slowly coming to realise, he didn’t love sex with Barbara Gordan. And, he feared, she was slowly starting to see it too. But they held onto each other because they were each other’s first time and it was beautiful, and special, and shouldn’t be allowed to end with a shrug of shoulders.

 

Then Barbara got them a pair of fake IDs. Somehow, at the age sixteen, he managed to bluff the bouncer into thinking he was twenty one. Or, perhaps, managed to give a long enough speech that the man decided keeping him out was more trouble than it was worth. It was in that club, sitting small and out of place behind a massive bar, that he saw them. _Really_ saw them for the first time. Alphas. Large, hungry, passionate. Stalking through the dancing throng of people like wolves through a flock of sheep.

 

They were hypnotic. Every roll of muscled flesh, every flicker of teeth as they silently faced each other off, and every predatory look. His heart stuttered with excitement whenever he smelt one approach and saw them tilt their heads towards him and inhale. Scenting him. Checking him. Was he the elusive omega they were seeking?

 

But, he was a beta so they moved on. A beta that, by all rights, should be happily attracted to the beautiful teenage girl sitting opposite him. Not the alphas that kept checking his scent and walking by. Betas were attracted to betas. Alphas to omegas. Omegas to alphas. That was the way it was. Of course he knew there were deviations from the norm. He wasn’t so ignorant to be unaware of that nor so sheltered to think it was a bad thing.

 

But he never thought it would be _him._

 

It was a truth he explored secretively on the internet, in his fantasies, and away from Barbara. But she knew. When they broke up it was a mutual agreement made without any pomp and circumstance in a coffee shop. But he knew it was his fault. She liked betas. She was attracted to them. She was attracted _to him_. But he needed something different from her.

 

He found it. Too soon. It was too soon but when Kori – a buxom teenage alien then with savage untameable curls of red hair – had come to earth and kissed him without permission or apology he had felt something click into place between them like he never felt with Barbara. Alpha. Kori was an alpha and she liked him. And he liked her. _He liked alphas._ Once he had acknowledged that fact he revelled in it.

 

Sex with Kori was dizzying, delicious, and everything that had been missing between him and Barbara. It also, at first, wasn’t indicative of a relationship. Kori slept with other people – seemingly of every gender and sexual caste as long as they were interesting in some way – and he’d endeavoured to find other willing alphas to do the same.

 

He and Barbara still went out to the clubs on the lower end of the Gotham strip but now only as friends. It was there, in his seventeenth year, that he discovered how to flirt with the passing alphas. He learnt to wink when they turned heads to check his scent, learnt to tip his head slightly and flutter his eyelashes as if overcome with the attention, and learnt how to gasp and arch prettily when one brushed by him. It worked. There were, as always, a lot more alphas than there were omegas and if he came across as an eager sexual partner more than one was willing to stop and listen even if he was a beta. A few even seemed to like the idea. It was in the alley behind the Iceberg Lounge that he learnt to suck a cock; and learnt to love it. The spotlight, the performance, the wanton exhibition of skill. It was something he was destined to love even if the idea of being fucked in the mouth by an alpha wasn’t enough to make him hard. He wasn’t willing to go bottom up for a stranger and considering the alpha’s typically dominant sexuality sucking them off seemed like a fun alternative.

 

It was Kori who first told him he was good at oral and he clung to that title with a savage pride. It was fun, he was being safe, and the world felt a bit like a circus ring. Glamorous, silly, and exciting. That was right around the time Jason presented.

 

Dick remembered the day the boy came down to breakfast, face pinched and eyes dark as if he hadn’t slept at all. He acted as if nothing had happened. As if he were the same boy that’d gone to bed the night before. But he wasn’t. Sometime in the last five hours his body had decided to unveil its secret and show the world it’s sexual caste. Alpha. _High level_. And sweating as if the flush of presenting hormones hadn’t yet subsided into a normal rhythm. Alfred had attempted to keep him home that day but Jason had left for school with a bitter _I ain’t a fuckin bitch on heat_ thrown over his shoulder.

 

Jason didn’t smell like sweet peppermint or lemon grass. He didn’t even smell like Kori. His adult scent was earthy, angry, and potent. Wild like he imagined a wolf would smell like. Perhaps it was that which made Dick realise he had never had sex with a high level alpha. Never experienced someone with an aroma, a touch, or a glare _that_ intense. None of them had ever stopped when he winked or smiled. A rare few had looked like they wanted to but none ever had. He went back out onto the town and flirted with every high level alpha he came across. Used every trick he had amassed at seducing them. None of it worked. Not until, after Bruce had finished another arbitrary round of grounding, he dampened and applied a false omega scent mask.

 

Dick never regretted anything he did on the town in Gotham. But he regretted that night.

 

At first it had been magical. He hadn’t been shy with the false omega scent and he’d smelt like nothing short of a high level omega. Faces turned as they passed him in the street, the bouncer let him into the Iceberg without wait or an ID, and once there his first drink was free. His second came in the hand of the first alpha that passed him; swooping in without a wink or a smile of encouragement.

 

He hadn’t quite planned on what exactly he would do with his night as an omega. He hadn’t really planned on it going very far. But it did. Fast. He was, to their noses, a high level omega and unlike most omegas he was unaccompanied. No pack, no mate, and no friends to stand protectively around him. The hunt was on. One alpha gave him a drink, another stole him away to dance, and two got kicked out for fighting. He giggled and groped a dark alpha with beautiful eyes, was snatched away by another, and presented with a dizzying array of food until his stomach ached from it all. A high level told him how beautiful he was. That should have been enough. But she was lanky, blonde, and left lipstick marks on his neck. There was another high level watching him. Built, dark haired, and male. Scent aggressive and stare starved. _That one_ , he decided. He had never been able to choose his alphas like this before and thrilled at the power as he abandoned the woman to approach the man. Dick remembered the alpha’s eyes had flashed like black fire under the strobe lighting.

 

The conversation had lasted mere moments before the man had towed him outside and started kissing him against the wall. It had been hot, filthy, and perfect… until he felt the man nuzzling at his neck. First one side, then the other, then the first side again. The motion was deliberate, searching for an omega gland that wasn’t there. He saw the alpha become aware of the absence and factor it in with his scent; his steady omega scent that wasn’t changing at all despite his obvious arousal. Like a false scent…

 

The man dropped him without a word and moved to leave. Dick grabbed his arm without thinking and the alpha spun around and delivered a sharp open slap to his cheek. Bruce would have skinned him alive if he knew he was caught by such a clumsy strike. But he was and it hurt. A lot.

 

That night the taxi driver that took him home was an alpha; older, attractive, smelt of smoke and shaving cream. In a desperate bid to prove to himself he wasn’t letting the experience and the resulting painful swelling in his cheek define him or his sexuality he offered to give the man a blow job. He always did that. He was good at that. Everyone said he was good at that. " _Sorry, kiddo. I’m more of a beta kind of guy."_ He’d laughed at that. An ugly kind of laugh that had hurt as it left his throat.

 

In the months that followed Jason’s caste started to manifest in earnest. He prowled through the manor; stalking scents and guarding territory, rapidly adopted a heavier build; hands large enough to promise he would outgrow Dick, and started challenging and disobeying instructions; both in the Robin costume and out. Dick hadn’t decided if he liked Jason’s puppyish alphahood or not. He was both cute and annoying and quickly evolving toward a more purposeful, adult, instincts. By the time Jason was fifteen, Dick nineteen, the boy was moving like the alphas Dick seduced in downtown Gotham; a wolf among sheep.

 

Then he died.

 

The world without Jason never made sense. It was twisted, dark, and pointless. A mess of different things that had been left grossly unfinished. No matter what he did that never seemed to change. He proposed to Kori and after a few months of engagement she gave him back his ring, he moved to Bludhaven and found his apartment almost as intolerable as the manor, and he abandoned superhero work to pretend he was happy as a police officer. For a time it seemed like the pack wouldn’t survive Jason’s death; he and Bruce were more apart than ever before and he even found himself subconsciously reaching for new pack bonds.

 

Looking for a new pack. A new place. Further and further away from the grave of that boy and the man he couldn’t help but blame for his death.

 

When Bruce’s caste had been revealed to the world it was almost a saving grace. A chance – a _reason_ – for him to return to Gotham and the pack he was in the process of abandoning. They reconciled and while it still hurt he began to see things move forward. Slowly, painfully, ponderously. The world a little bit grey. A little bit ugly. A little bit senseless, and cold, and wasted… but getting better.

 

Then Jason came back.

 

The news had been like a firecracker across his darkness and he had grasped hold of it; sure it would burn him, sure it was a lie, but unable to put it down. He’d ridden back to the manor, dropped his bike, and walked without greeting Bruce or Alfred into the medical wing of the cave.

 

That moment Dick remembered in vivid detail.

 

He’d felt numb as he walked into the cave, sick as he continued into the medical bay, and finally dizzy as he turned the corner and took in the scene before him.

 

It was him. Jason. The stern set of his features, the tight angry lips, and the thick black hair that twisted towards a stubborn curl where it was left to grow. The face that he had known for years transplanted onto a fully grown male alpha body. In that moment the hows and whys hadn’t mattered. All that mattered was…

 

_“Jason…”_

 

The boy – the man – had looked up and studied him for the longest time. _“You look different.”_

 

 _“S-so do you,”_ Dick had whispered. _"We're, um, both older so I guess..."_

 

 _“How old are you?”_ Jason's voice had sliced through his own.

 

 _“I just turned twenty three.”_ Dick told him. Small, soft, and strangely hurt that the man hadn't bothered to count.

 

Jason stared at him and for a moment there was something ugly and wretched in his eyes. Something unfathomable, broken, and bleeding. _“Oh.”_

 

Jason never said much about his death or resurrection. Bruce found out enough from Ras. Dick tried to put those kind of ugly thoughts out of his mind as he moved back into the manor, returned Nightwing to Gotham, and watched the pack return – impossibly – to normal. Jason and Bruce fought, Alfred and he tried to stop them. It was as if Jason hadn’t been gone years but only a couple of months. As if he had been at high school camp and not lying in a grave. But there was something different about it. Something colder, crueller. Mad. He wasn’t Little Wing anymore. But he was Jason. After everything, that was enough. More than enough.

 

Enough to fall stupidly in love with.

 

Dick blew away the last of Barbara’s scent, looked out the window, and watched her drive away. If he could have fallen in love with her like he should have the world would be so much easier. But he’d never taken the easy way out. Even when he wanted to. He hadn’t been able to leave Jason when he tried nor escape the bleakness that had descended in the wake of his death. He loved him. Savagely, wildly, unstoppably. A feeling like fire behind his ribs. Dialling down his dream wedding so it could belong to Jason as well was a small price to pay in the wake of that feeling.

 

Because, Jason didn’t want to get married. He wanted to _be_ married. The ceremony, the ritual; that wasn’t him. He was doing that for Dick. He’d got a new ID, a permanent address, and wasn’t even currently operated as Red Hood. What did matching suits and rings matter beside that? Even if Dick wanted it. _God,_ he still wanted it.

 

He cursed himself and pulled his phone from his pocket. Texted Jason. _Are you getting rings for the wedding?_ They did need rings, he justified. The wedding was looking much too traditional to skip such an intrinsic step. Rings was something they would have to organise. Or, more likely, something else Dick would have to choose. Something else to remove Jason even further from the event.

 

The man answered minutes later. _OK. What do you want?_

 

His heart sank further. _I don’t know. What do you like?_

 

A moment later. _Tell me what you want, Dick._

 

Dick stared at those words for a long time. _Tell me what you want_. The answer was easy. _You. I want you. I’ve always wanted you._ _I want you… to be a part of this._ He closed his eyes and dropped his phone on the coffee table.

 

Fuck.

 

_Fuck._


	3. Chapter 3

Kon sat in the sturdy embrace of one of Wayne Manor’s ancient armchairs and gnawed agitated at his thumbnail. Around him a small sample of Tim’s pack were gathered to watch the TV. Damian sprawled across the floor and Tim and Jason shared the sofa. Jason glaring at him as much as the TV.

 

Kon caught one of those looks and deliberately lowered his chin – keeping his eyes up – as he held the man’s glare. It was a small show of defiance that was minor enough to be written off as a mistake if Tim saw but was also deliberate enough to be noticed by the other alpha. _You’re not the boss of me._

 

A muscle in Jason’s jaw worked and he lent forward, feigning interest in the show to put his torso directly between Kon and Tim.

 

Kon nearly bit through his thumb. He really hated that man.

 

The TV dutifully displayed the newest installment in a documentary series on the world’s most extreme prisons. Having covered everything from Arkham Asylum to Belle Reve and even Peña Duro in the first season the makers were attempting to capitalise on the success by over dramatizing the more standard penitentiaries left to them. Despite their best efforts the simple cells looked lacklustre beside the memory of Killer Croc’s cages and the excuses as to why each prison was classed as ‘extreme’ were becoming more and more feeble. This week the program depicted Blackgate’s omega facility while an all-American voice-over declared that these ‘sinful sirens’ were among the worst criminal offenders of their caste and not to be underestimated.

 

Kon made an unhappy noise, silently begging Tim to object to the portrayal of his sexual caste and leave the room. If Tim left the room he could find an excuse to follow. He had less than an hour before he had to journey back to Smallville and he would rather spend that time alone with Tim than mingling with the pack. But Tim didn’t object. He just sat on the corner of the sofa, the spot beside him deliberately filled by Jason, and stared at the screen with a kind of lazy semi interest; body hidden beneath a massive hoodie, legs hugged to his chest, and chin resting on his folded knees.

 

Despite it he was still stunning. Features straight, lashes long, and lips a pale pink tipped with a delicate cupid’s bow. Tim hadn’t yet developed any sign of facial hair and only the subtle square of his jaw, the slim strong span of his shoulders, and the expressive weight of his brows spoke to his masculinity. It was an almost old fashioned kind of omega beauty and it was manifesting more with every step the boy took towards adulthood. He was seventeen of last September and slipping quietly through what would likely be his last growth spurt. _God,_ Kon wanted to touch him. To mess up that perfect soft hair, taste the white of his skin, and strip back all those layers of clothes until he found the body beneath. That perfect body that twitched and arched when he touched it in the right places, that smelt better than anything he could imagine, and felt _so fucking good_ when he opened it up.

 

“Disgusting,” Damian muttered as he glared at the TV.

 

A burly beta guard was prowling through the male wing telling the camera that they had to make sure to break up sexual encounters among inmates. Male omegas were one of the only two sexual castes that could both sire and bear children and, unlike alpha females, once they became pregnant there wasn’t a high chance of them losing that pregnancy. While it was unlikely an omega male could act as a successful sire it did happen and more than one man had left the prison pregnant in the past.

 

“What’s so gross about omegas having sex with each other?” Tim muttered.

 

“They’re _impregnating_ each other,” Damian said the word as if it were dirty.

 

“Yes, they are.” Tim agreed without looking away from the screen. “And that’s why omega males are the best caste. If everyone else died tomorrow we would still be able to continue the human race, all by ourselves.”

 

“Which is disgusting!” Damian snapped. “They’re _omegas_ acting as _sires_!”

 

“Says the kid that _wouldn’t be here_ if omega males didn’t sire now and again.”

 

“You hold your tongue, Drake!”

 

“Why don’t they just let them have birth control?” Tim asked the TV as the guard interrupted a kissing couple.

 

“It might be seen as condoning rape,” Kon suggested if only to see Tim’s eyes dart over towards him.

 

“Yeah, okay, I get that but those two clearly weren’t raping each other.”

 

“No, I guess not.” Kon agreed. “Hey, do you have homework to do upstairs or…?”

 

“Homework can wait until you’re gone,” Jason growled. “Right now we’re having fun.” An angry ugly slice of sarcasm.

 

He _really_ hated that man.

 

The show cut to a news break. There was only one topic of discussion. Batman Incorporated. Tim sat up straighter. He wasn’t going anywhere.

 

It was forty one minutes before Kon had to leave. He’d been looking forward to this visit all day and hadn’t yet been alone with Tim for a second. What was worse was Tim wasn’t helping him rectify that problem; didn’t even seem to understand there was a problem. It had been almost two weeks since they last did anything. It didn’t even have to be sex. Just… _something._

 

Kon felt himself reach out towards the other boy without even realising what he was doing. Not with his body but with the invisible arm of Kryptonian TK. A kind of clumsy tactile telekinesis. It was a superpower he’d only recently discovered, something Superman didn’t have, and he had already accidentally punched Bart in the face with it during training at the Teen Titans. It was like an ungainly unused limb, or a second skin that he could extend out from his body. He touched Tim with it now, felt a tingle as he came in contact with the other boy’s body, and saw the omega’s clothing shift around the connection against his chest. Tim shuddered, froze, and looked at Kon in shock.

 

He realised what he was doing and the extension snapped back into himself with almost painful speed.

 

He couldn’t TK at Tim. He wasn’t good enough at it yet. It wasn’t safe.

 

But…

 

On a whim he reached out toward the TV. Behind it. Felt the power input. Slipped a barrier between it and the copper wiring in the wall.

 

The screen went dark.

 

Damian hissed in annoyance, Jason cursed, and Tim stared directly at Kon. He flashed the boy a hopeful smile in response. Judging by the way his eyes widened Tim took that as a confession of guilt.

 

He lurched to his feet. “Maybe a storm or… I-I’ll make sure the fridge is still on.” He darted from the room.

 

Kon felt something deep, heavy, and _alpha_ stir inside him at the sight. He wanted to chase him, to hunt him, and bend him over the nearest piece of furniture when he caught him.

 

Jason shot him a black look.

 

He smiled, deliberately showing too many teeth, and pulled his TK back into himself. The TV screen glowed blue for a second before returning to the news broadcast. An outraged reporter was picking apart Bruce’s speech and wildly speculating as to what drove such a move. _“…perhaps his child’s sire isn’t such a mystery after all, considering he and Batman are apparently so close. It would certainly explain why he hasn’t actively sort to find…”_

 

“I’m going to go get Tim,” Jason growled. Left.

 

The second he was out of sight Kon was on his feet. _Not if I get him first, arsehole._

 

Damian watched with a strange unreadable stare as Kon darted across the room and climbed out the window. “If Jason comes back can you say I went to the bathroom or, actually, say Ma phoned and I had to leave, okay…?”

 

The boy pursed his lips. “What reason have I to lie?”

 

“I, eh, I’ll owe you one,” Kon tried to smile.

 

Damian considered this. “Did you do that to the TV?”

 

“I…”

 

“Very well,” the boy decided. “I won’t tell him, alien, but you are in my debt.” Stare serious. “I may one day be in need of your talents.”

 

Kon didn’t waste time just then considering that statement. “O-okay.” Dropped onto the lawn and raced around the outside of the house. He found Tim before Jason did. Just. The boy was in the kitchen, biting his bottom lip, and looking unspeakably sexy. He swooped in, snatched him up without ever touching the ground, and darted out of the room with his prize. All of it done fast enough not to leave a scent trail the other alpha could follow.

 

“Kon!”

 

“Shh!” Kon darted down a corridor and pulled the boy through a random door. The room beyond was a small elegant sitting room. It was unheated and cold but _empty_. He checked the time. Thirty six minutes. It seemed like a tiny stretch of time, but if he stayed a little late he might be able to knot him. _God,_ he wanted to knot him. To feel the grip of his body, to hear the sharp intake of breath, and the body slump boneless in his arms. But, no. Tim didn’t like having sex where there was a good chance of them getting caught and, judging by the look the omega was giving him, he would need to do some convincing to even get close to the sex part.

 

“What the hell are you doing, Kon? You’ll get both of us into trouble.”

 

“I wanted to…” he reached out and touched Tim’s cheek.

 

The omega frowned. “Kon…”

 

“I’ve been missing you so much and you looked so beautiful in there I…”

 

Softly. “Jason will be looking for us.”

 

“I don’t care about Jason.” He leant forward to kiss him.

 

Tim leant back. “Don’t you like my pack?”

 

“Huh?”

 

Again. “Don’t you like my pack? You never want to hang out with them. I know they’re not Young Justice or the Teen Titans but they’re cool, under it all. Jason too. He was my only real friend for a while, believe it or not.” A pause. “And how can you miss me? I saw you two days ago.”

 

“We haven’t… in ages…” he tried.

 

Tim’s eyes darkened. “So, you don’t miss me; you’re just missing sex with me.”

 

Kon stared. “Aren’t you?”

 

“I…” Tim turned away from him. “Not everything has to be about sex all the time. Especially here; you’re always trying to steal me away. Can’t you at least try to get to know the pack? You might like them.”

 

“I do know the pack,” he said defensively. “I talk to Dick sometimes and Damian was just like…”

 

“What about Jason?”

 

A pause. “What about Jason?” Kon echoed.

 

“You never talk to Jason. You never even _try_ to get along with him.”

 

“It’s… you wouldn’t…”

 

“I wouldn’t understand?” His eyes narrowed. “Why? Is it alpha business? I wouldn’t understand because I’m an omega?”

 

This sounded bad. Really bad. But… “Kinda.”

 

Tim stared at him. “Christ, Kon.” Turned to leave.

 

“Hey!” He grabbed his arm. “That’s not fair. Dick, Barbara, and Alfred always have ‘beta business’ they want to talk about.”

 

“That’s a joke! And they gossip,” Tim said. “They don’t hate each other.”

 

“And you and Bruce…”

 

“What? What do you think we do? Talk about period pains and how sexy our near identical alphas are?” He pushed his hand from his arm. “Grow up, Kon.” Left.

 

Kon stared after him feeling keenly humiliated like he’s just been slapped in public. It was an ugly feeling that prickled across his face and settled too heavy in his stomach. Wrong. Like an open wound this was wrong and he couldn’t just leave it. He’d done something wrong, Tim was unhappy with him, and he needed to fix it. The desire shot through him. Hot, urgent, like the screech of a guitar string. “Wait Tim!” He lurched after him. “I’m sorry I…”

 

He raced through the door and almost crashed into Jason. The other alpha fixed him with a blistering look. When he spoke his teeth flashed and voice growled. “What’s going on, Tim? Did h—?”

 

“Nothing,” the boy sighed. “Seriously, guys. Can’t we just go back to the TV room?”

 

“Damian told me you had a phone call,” Jason said, ignoring Tim, eyes fixed on Kon. “He said you had to go.”

 

 _Damn it!_ “I just texted Ma. It’s not urgent,” Kon forced a smile.

 

“Are you sure?” The other alpha pressed. “You were leaving without even saying goodbye.” A hard look. “Sounds urgent.”

 

“It’s just a misunderstanding.”

 

“Still, you better make sure everything’s alright. You are the alpha of _that_ family after all.”

 

Kon glared at him.

 

Tim groaned, spun around, and began walking back towards the living room. “Just go.”

 

Jason. “I’ll show you the door.”

 

“I can find it myself,” he growled, eyes fixed on the shape of the retreating omega.

 

“Big house. You could get lost.” Jason practically shoved him down the hall.

 

By the time they were at the door Tim was well out of sight and they’d both abandoned any pretences of civility. Glares flew unchecked, teeth flashed, and scents crashed together; high level alpha and high level alpha at war.

 

“You’re a real piece of work,” Jason said through his teeth. “This isn’t your fucking territory, freak. You’re not part of this pack. You can’t just come in here and take what you want.”

 

Kon grabbed his jacket and pulled it on. “You know, in a year Tim will be eighteen. A legal adult.” Let that statement settle for a moment. “Funny, right? I mean, in a year he’ll be able to pick a mate and marry without permission if he wants. And his pack… well, there’s no grey area anymore. Not at eighteen. You guys won’t be able to do anything about it.” He flashed his teeth in an ugly smile. “Time flies, huh? I wonder who he’ll pick.”

 

“You little fucking—!”

 

“Punching me is a good way to break a fist,” he reminded him.

 

“Yeah? I might have some kryptonite that can help with that.”

 

He squared his jaw. “Go ahead. Tim will know you hit first.”

 

“Will he, huh?” Jason’s snarled. “Funny how you think you’ve got him all figured out. Just like you thought he would let you fuck him just now. Cause that was what you were doing, wasn’t it? But he turned you down.” Eyes shone with dark satisfaction. “What makes you think he wants you?”

 

“He’s my boyfriend. I know him. I know what he wants.” Quieter. “I know what he _likes_.”

 

“You tricked him! Just like Clark tricked Bruce! That’s what you alien dogs do! He’s too good to go off with someone like you if you’d played it straight.” Darker. “I don’t know how you did it but I know you did.”

 

“He’s too smart to trick,” Kon told him.

 

Low. “No one’s too smart to trick.”

 

Kon snorted and pushed through the door letting in a gust of ice laced wind. “Actually, I was wrong before. It’s not a year. It’s more like eight and a half months.” Smiled and left.

 

As he flew away he heard the sound of something shattering.

 

He hated fighting with Jason. But the only alternative was not fighting. Something deep inside him told him that was unacceptable. If he wasn’t fighting he was submitting. While submitting to Tim’s will was easy, and submitting to Bruce a downright necessity, submitting to another alpha’s… that wasn’t okay. At least, not when it came to alphas like Jason. Not when it was about Tim. Tim was too important to let slip beyond his reach without a fight.

 

He flew to the nearest boom tube and teleported to the pad just outside Smallville. The muggy bite of Gotham’s air shifted to the fringed sting of pelting snow as he bolted unseen back into the warmth and safety of the farmhouse. Martha greeted him fondly, he patted the dogs, and – once he was able – disappeared into the privacy of his bedroom. It was Clark’s old room and he hadn’t done much except to hang some more modern posters on the wall and change the bed sheets from blue to black ones. He spent about a half of his time here, a third in the Teen Titan Tower since he joined half a year ago, and the rest at Wayne Manor.

 

He phoned Tim. The boy didn’t answer.

 

_You tricked him._

 

The words frothed up unbidden into his mind. A stark simple accusation. What did that even mean? Tricked. How could you trick someone into being your boyfriend? How could you trick someone into loving you? It didn’t make sense. It was just another one of Jason’s stupid excuses to hate him. But…

 

His mind flashed back. Mount Justice. Back when Bart, Cassie, Red Tornado, Tim and he were an unchecked untried team of teen superheroes that called themselves Young Justice. Tim had come back one night in a sticky pink shirt with South Gotham High written on it. It was after a long absence and Kon had been afraid he wouldn’t come back at all. He remembered his thoughts that night. _How do I make him stay? How do I make him like me? How can I find him if he leaves again?_ The answers had all been the same. The shirt. It was a possession Tim might come back for if he lost, it had a logo on it Kon might be able to match up with a location, and if Kon gave Tim _his_ shirt not only would he get the stained pink PE uniform but he could ‘innocently’ remove half his clothing and put it on Tim. He would be half naked and Tim would be smelling him as long as he wore it.

 

It was manipulative, played to the fact that Tim didn’t think he was as aware as he was at the time, and it had worked. Days later he was part of Tim’s life, he’d kissed him, and within the month he’d taken Tim’s virginity. All because he’d tricked him… he’d tricked him…

 

No! _No!_ He hadn’t tricked Tim. They’d chosen each other. That was why they were together. That was why they were boyfriends. They loved each other. They wanted each other…

 

Tim leaning away from a kiss. _“Kon…”_

 

Tim pushing off his hand. _“Grow up, Kon.”_

 

Tim walking away down the hall. _“Just go.”_

 

It was just a bad day, he told himself. He’d wanted sex when Tim didn’t want to have sex. He overstepped the mark. Tim was annoyed at him. He needed to apologise. That was all.

 

He chewed his lip. Just a bad day. It’s okay… it’s… he _always_ wanted to have sex with Tim. Ached with it. Why didn’t Tim always want to have sex with him? It couldn’t be an omega thing. Could it? No. He’d seen Bruce flirt with Clark. He knew how often Bart instigated with Jaime; those two weren’t half as subtle as they thought. So why not Tim? Tim loved him, he knew that. But what if Tim wasn’t as sexually attracted to him as he was to Tim? What if he was only with him because of Kon’s aggressive pursuit of him? What if he _had_ tricked him?

 

Tim. _“…you’re just missing sex with me.”_

 

_“Aren’t you?”_

 

Tim had never answered that question. Not really.

 

Kon felt his heart twist with an edge of raw ugly panic.

 

Didn’t Tim like sex with him?

 

NO! It was the place. The time. It was stupid of him to instigate then. It was Kon’s fault. It… why hadn’t he answered the question? All it took was a simple ‘yes, but…’. Why wouldn’t Tim give him that? Why would he turn away? Why would he say nothing?

 

He was phoning Tim again before he realised what he was doing. No answer.

 

He was being stupid. Why would Tim be with him if he didn't want him? Didn't like what he did to him? The answer bubbled up like black bile in the back of his brain; playing out in Jason's low husky snarl.

 

_You tricked him._


	4. Chapter 4

The great thing about his role as Superman was it didn’t require a lot of paperwork. Barely any, in fact. An occasional witness stamp here, an autograph there. An illiterate could have done the job. As far as he could tell Batman had even less need of legal documentation. There had never been a need for Batman or his allies to put pen to paper. That was, until Batman Incorporated.

 

Clark finished reading through the massive three hundred and forty page contract written up by the Wayne Enterprises lawyers and smiled ruefully up at Bruce who was still on page two and already looking tired.

 

“Do you mind if I give you the spoilers?”

 

Bruce sighed and put the paper down. “Please do.”

 

“Page sixty nine,” he gave his mate the piece of paper. “Paragraph two. Right at the bottom.”

 

Bruce read it. Grunted. “That’s okay. I predicted they would suggest that. It shouldn’t be a problem and it’ll probably make the shareholders less nervous about this whole idea if the CEO has a more stable position.” He pushed the page back into the pile. “They don’t want me to come back.”

 

“Do you want to go back?” Clark asked, unwilling to slip the page away so easily. “You could take over the company again, if you wanted. A lot has changed in five years. People are more aware of omega rights and I think more companies need omega CEOs.”

 

“Fox is doing a good job,” Bruce muttered, gaze already riveted onto the next part of the contract. “I prefer dedicating myself to Batman.”

 

“Okay,” Clark ceded and flicked through the stack. “Page one hundred and ninety two,” he passed it over. “I wasn’t sure about the point… yeah that one. It’s worded really ambiguously. Do they want the shipping contracts to be given to the secondary shipping enterprise if Batman orders something into Gotham as a general rule or are they trying to pass on particular shipping contracts if it has something to do with Batman? Or am I misreading that entirely?”

 

Bruce was frowning. “Peterson you arsehole,” he muttered and marked the offending point with a red tag. “Anything else?”

 

“Just one more thing,” Clark handed him the piece of paper. “Page three hundred and three. I think this is a mistake but they failed to list you among the relevant parties. They didn’t do it anywhere else in the document, just here.”

 

Bruce snapped another red tag onto page and slipped it back into the pile. “I’ll send it back and ask them to fix those two points,” he muttered. “What draft is this?”

 

“Seven.”

 

“Do you think they’ll give up at draft eight?” The billionaire asked grimly.

 

“No. I think they’re trying to delay,” Clark said honestly. “Put off anything official for as long as possible. But,” he shrugged. “The first draft has ninety eight red tags in it so I suppose this _is_ an improvement.”

 

“We can’t waste much more time bargaining,” the billionaire said wearily. “I need the equipment in Wayne Industries out in the world. There have been another nine Leviathan attacks in the last week and six of them are deliberately hitting where I’ve set up members of Batman Inc. Tokyo, London, Sydney...” he rubbed his brow. “It’s a challenge and the longer I waste time here the longer it is going unanswered and the less respect Batman Inc. will hold globally.”

 

“What about Gotham?”

 

Bruce frowned. “I said globally, Clark. This isn’t just…”

 

“No, I mean the attacks.” Clark specified. “They attacked six cities with Batman Inc. members but not Gotham? That’s strange don’t you think? If challenging Batman really was the goal why would they hit the outposts and leave the keep alone?”

 

Bruce looked at him for a long time. “I have some theories.”

 

“So it might just be coincidence?” Clark asked hopefully. “Not a challenge?”

 

“It might mean something’s coming to Gotham,” he said, voice low. “Something big.”

 

“We’ll look after her,” Clark promised him. “Gotham will be fine.”

 

A pause.

 

“I know,” he muttered finally. “I do. I just wish I knew what or who I was up against here. Leviathan has sprung out of nowhere and there is no conformity to their attacks beyond the targets and the general absurdity in the way they’re carried out.” He pushed the contract away from him across the desk. The side of his chair knocked against Clark’s. “They almost seem like typical pop criminals, fame seekers, or perhaps a collection of people just revelling in super criminal culture. The crimes are big, pointless, over the top. No obvious momentary gain. I could almost believe it was just something like that. But they’re organised to a terrifying degree.” He drummed his fingers into the wooden tabletop. “There _has_ to be a supervillain of some kind, Clark. There has to be. There is too much direction – too much purpose – for these attacks just to be criminal. It’s almost as if it’s personal. As if they’re after Batman not to stop him but to hurt or toy with him. As if they know him.”

 

Clark ran his hand through his hair. “You’re thinking someone from your rogue’s gallery,” he concluded. “Someone you’ve fought before.”

 

“Yes,” Bruce muttered. “But I’ve never fought someone who matches this criminal profile let alone someone with the means, money, and drive to do something on this scale.” His eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t make sense.”

 

“Never underestimate the drive of supervillains,” Clark muttered miserably.

 

Since the age of superheroes began so did the age of supervillains. Some were power mad aliens attracted to the planet by the massing meta-human population, some weapons, and others crazy criminals that thought their path to fame and fortune was to be the next Joker in a mask or Lex Luthor in a robot suit. Clark couldn’t accept that one necessarily gave birth to the other – that superheroes caused the emergence of supervillains or vice versa – but also couldn’t morally bring himself to wash his hands of the situation either. The fact of the matter is, he came first. Before there were superheroes, or supervillains, there was Superman.

 

However inadvertently, he started this war, and he would help Bruce finish it.

 

“What have they done?” He asked. “The attacks?”

 

“They created one of the most convoluted death traps I have ever seen in Argentina,” Bruce answered, “set London on fire, and put a deep sea octopus into my agents’ apartment in downtown Tokyo.” He shook his head. “I would almost believe it wasn’t one organisation if not for the ‘Hail Leviathan’ mantra they all keep sprouting, the matching banners, and the poetry.”

 

Clark lifted an eyebrow. “Poetry?”

 

Bruce’s lips thinned. “They all say seemingly random lines of poetry whenever we beat down an agent enough to get them talking.”

 

“What kind of poetry?”

 

“Love poetry.”

 

Clark swirled that information through his brain, unsure what to make of it. Was it brainwashing? Was it a code? Was it simply a trail leading to nowhere to throw them off the scent? It was hard to tell with so little information and Clark doubted he would have any ideas Bruce wasn’t already investigating even if he did delve deeper. The omega couldn’t read a three hundred and forty page contract in half a minute but he had an unsurpassed knowledge of signs and symbolism in any form, had never not been able to break a linguistic code, and truly was a terrifying detective. If there was anything there Bruce would find it.

 

The omega sighed. “Let’s hope this is the last contract,” he said and began composing an email to Fox, CEO of Wayne Industries, as to the changes that needed to be made before any signatures were laid down. It was a curt and to the point document void of any of the fluff and eccentricities Bruce Wayne the billionaire playboy would include. Once it was sent Bruce sat in his chair, stared intently at a spot on the edge of his desk, and chewed his bottom lip. Thinking.

 

He’d been doing that a lot since Leviathan. Just sitting and thinking. Trying to work it all out.

 

He looked older. The lines on his face were furrowed with concentration, one hand rested absently on the impressive paunch of his pregnancy, and – Clark noticed for the first time – the first flecks of silver grey sparkled at scattered points across his scalp. That realisation wrenched at him. Cold and ugly. It wasn’t that he minded the grey and Bruce was almost forty seven. It was to be expected, it suited him, and could never diminish his beauty. But it was a stark reminder that Bruce was aging when Clark himself seemed to be maturing less and less with every year.

 

Clark watched him for a while, memorising every detail of him as he was now. The flawed perfection that was his mate. The shadow of promised facial hair snaking down his neck, the impossibly penetrating pale colour of his eyes, and the chipped nail on his left thumb. His pregnancy had both changed his body more than Clark could have imagined and not changed it as much as he expected. Bruce was still broad shouldered, still heavily muscled, and his hair still peeled back from his brow with a straight stern widow’s peak. The bulge was large and never quite a picture perfect shape, his hips had flared, and – hidden under his clothing – his nipples had changed shape and colour. He hadn’t grown breasts. Not yet. Clark suspected that was something that bothered Bruce – the fact that other male omegas at his stage in pregnancy were fully bosomed – but the man hadn’t said anything to him about it so he didn’t bring it up.

 

It didn’t matter. Bruce, with or without breasts, pregnant, almost forty seven, was still the most beautiful thing on the face of the planet. Almost terrifyingly so. To the point where he couldn’t understand how blind he must have been not to be drooling in love with him from the first moment he saw him. To the point that other omega scents seemed dull and uninspired in comparison. To the point at which he didn’t think he had a pregnancy fetish but whenever he looked at Bruce naked and bloated with their baby… there it was.

 

To the point Clark wished he had found him when Bruce was sixteen and they hadn’t wasted a moment.

 

Bruce sighed, clearly finding no answer within himself, and moved to stand. Clark knew better than to offer to help him but asked. “Where are you going?”

 

“Hungry,” the man answered.

 

Clark bolted down to the kitchen to steal a wild assortment of food and flew back to silently offer it to the other man before he could finish rising out of his chair. The omega blinked, regarded the platter, and picked up a package of smoked salmon. It wasn’t a surprise. Bruce hadn’t admitted any cravings throughout his pregnancy but Alfred had told Clark more and more fish had been disappearing especially since Bruce entered his third trimester. Smoked salmon seemed to be a favourite.

 

“Maybe Leviathan is just madly in love with Batman,” he suggested with a teasing smile. “Hence the poetry.”

 

“Dick would be charming enough to make some multinational psychopath fall in love with him,” Bruce joked, voice dripping in sarcasm. “You’ve solved it. This is really just one big love letter.”

 

Clark laughed. “So, we just need to tell Leviathan, ‘sorry, he’s getting married’.”

 

“’and you’re not invited,’” Bruce added with a smile that looked like it weighed a lot.

 

“Speaking of the wedding,” Clark picked up some berries from the platter of food, tasted a few, and offered the rest to his mate. “We need to think of gifts.”

 

Bruce groaned. “You do it.”

 

“That’s not fair. They’re your boys and I did Christmas.”

 

“You enjoy gift shopping,” Bruce told him. “Everyone liked your Christmas presents.”

 

Clark frowned. “What do you hate? Shopping or gift giving?”

 

“Both.”

 

“No, that’s not true. You bought all those baby clothes.”

 

Bruce didn’t say anything. Ate his food.

 

“Which, by the way,” Clark pushed his chair closer to Bruce’s. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Why did you buy boy baby clothes?”

 

“I didn’t.”

 

“Yes you did.”

 

“I bought _blue_ baby clothes,” Bruce told him and ripped off a piece of salmon.

 

Clark “Blue for a girl?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But boys wear blue.”

 

Defensively. “I like blue.”

 

“But,” Clark tried to make him understand. “Everyone will think we have a boy.”

 

“Then everyone’s an idiot for thinking gender is defined by the colour of a onesie,” the responded crisply. “She’s my girl and _I like blue_.”

 

“People don’t think gender is defined by blue,” Clark tried once more. “Just… _broadcasted_.”

 

“I’m not broadcasting our baby.”

 

“Okay.” Clark shook his head in defeat, a smile tugging at his lips. “Okay, fine. I give up. Put her in blue.”

 

Firmly. “I will.”

 

“But _you_ have to take care of the gifts. I mean, you’re buying the baby clothes so you might as well pick something up for the wedding at the same time. It’s only logical.”

 

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “That’s manipulative.”

 

“A bit,” he confessed with a wry smile.

 

“You didn’t accept the Christmas present I got you,” the omega started, stepping into play. “You gave it back.”

 

Clark crossed his arms, still smiling. “Because it was money.”

 

“You turned down a present from your mate.” Bruce continued, voice low and soft. The sound playful to those who knew him. “That hurt.”

 

“Hurt me too,” Clark added quickly. “I’m your mate and you just got me money. And are you seriously trying to pull the you-scarred-me-for-life-and-now-I-can’t-buy-gifts card? Come on, Bruce. I know you can do better than that.”

 

“I can buy gifts,” the man continued, leaning back in his chair and not relenting. “But I always somehow buy the wrong thing. That would never happen to you. You know what everyone else wants. You never buy the wrong thing. It’s another superpower and one I can’t hope to best especially since neither Dick nor Jason has told me what to buy.”

 

“Ah huh,” Clark saw where he was going with this. “You’re _so_ bad at gift giving that I _have_ to be the one that figures out what to give them.”

 

Bruce nodded. “It is an unfortunate truth.”

 

“No,” he upped the stakes. “It isn’t. You can’t buy me the right gift because there’s nothing I want. It’s me, not you.”

 

The omega snorted. “Come on, Clark.”

 

“No, I’m serious.” Clark shook his head. “What am I to want? I’m living in the perfect house with the perfect mate who’s going to give birth to the perfect baby pretty soon. What else is there?”

 

“You must want something.” Bruce insisted. “Everyone wants something.”

 

“What?” Clark threw up his hands in a grandiose gesture. “What am I supposed to want? I want us to agree on a name for our daughter, I want Batman Inc. to defeat Leviathan, and I want you to help me shop for Jason and Dick. What else is there? A fresh super-suit? The Fortress moved three inches to the left? Some porn for deep space missions? No, Bruce. I don’t want anything. I doubt Dick and Jason want anything either but it’s a wedding and you’re the dad. You got to give them something.”

 

Bruce was looking at him with a strangely ponderous expression. “You wanted porn for Christmas?”

 

“That wasn’t the point,” Clark told him. “Don’t deflect. That’s cheating.”

 

“What kind of porn?”

 

“Bruce, I was just trying to say…”

 

“Porn of me?”

 

Clark stopped, mouth open, halfway through shaping a word he couldn’t even remember. “Ah,” he coughed. “Um…”

 

Bruce’s lips twitched toward a smile. “Is that what you wanted, Clark? You smell… _interested_ by the idea.”

 

“No I… you can’t smell that… can you?”

 

Bruce’s smile boomed in earnest. Toothy, victorious. “I’m not exactly in the fittest figure to perform right now but if...”

 

“No that’s… you look so bea…” he swallowed and desperately tried to find the shattered pieces of his composure.

 

Bruce was unrelenting. “You want a porno of me pregnant.” Eyes sparkling. “You _like_ me pregnant.”

 

“Ye… I mean no, I mean it’s…”

 

“Isn’t that interesting.”

 

“Fuck, Bruce I…” he licked his lips. “My point is Jason and Dick, not—”

 

“Good thing you brought this up now,” he interrupted him. “I’m not going to be pregnant for that much longer.”

 

“You’re…? You’re not _really_ …” Clark rasped. “I mean… are you?”

 

“I guess I’m going to be busy,” Bruce purred as he stood, leaning on the desk. “You’re going to need to buy the wedding presents for me.”

 

“That’s manipulative,” Clark echoed Bruce from earlier, his voice holding none of the power his mate’s had. Defeated.

 

“A bit,” Bruce claimed his victory.

 

“Okay,” Clark pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll buy them but, no games, I want you to help. I’m really not sure what to get and they’re your boys.”

 

Bruce nodded. “I’ll think on it.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Good.”

 

A pause.

 

“And… are you seriously going to…” Clark licked his lips as he felt a prickle of colour in his cheeks. “I mean, that was a joke. Right?”

 

A long pause.

 

“You’re not… Right?”

 

Another silence.

 

Chest tight. _“Right?”_

 

“I never did get you a proper Christmas present,” the man noted, almost absently, as he walked out the door.

 

“Wait! B-Bru…!” Clark began.

 

A scream.

 

Close enough to come from downtown Gotham.

 

It was followed by several others and a chatter of high frequency noise that didn’t sound human… or friendly. “Damn it,” Clark rasped, flew upstairs to wrestle into his Superman uniform, and bolted back down to press and open kiss onto his mate’s lips. “G-got to take care of something but about the… thing. You don’t… I don’t need… it’s… you’re the most b—”

 

“Get out of here,” Bruce told him. Grabbed Clark’s arse. “I’ll be waiting.”

 

"I..." he gasped. "I'll be back soon."

 

"You better."

 

It took almost all of his superhuman strength to step out of the other man’s embrace and fly out the nearest window. Once he did the cold scentless air felt like a deep space after leaving the smell, the heat, and the touch of his mate.

 

It was dusk, well before Batman usually took to the streets, and citizens were flooding panicked out of an art gallery. He didn’t blame them. The building’s glass ceiling was smashed and inside the hallways were packed full of winged creatures clicking and shrieking to each other as the flapped between exhibits. Large humanoid bodies covered with course dark hair, massive ears lined with a mess of interlocking blood vessels, and doglike maws filled with a mess of pointed teeth. Their leathery wings were attached to the animal’s forearms and a few clutched swords in oversized hands.

 

Man-Bats. Ninja Man-Bats.

 

_Only in Gotham._

 

Clark had never seen a Man-Bat before but he’d seen footage and knew the history. Dr Langstrom; a brilliant beta who had picked the wrong obsession and become yet another self-testing doctor that had come to regret it. He must have started sharing the serum. Bruce isn’t going to be happy about that. He thought he’d gotten through to Langstorm.

 

Clark dived down and scooped up a boy that was about to be sliced in half by the nearest monster, gathered up an old man standing terrified in the middle of the main reception hall, and threw a cornered alpha that had been about to attack over his shoulder. They all blinked at him as he settled them down on the pavement and he forced his lips into his usual easy smile.

 

“Stay out of trouble now.”

 

Another trip. Another three people saved.

 

“There you go. You might be a little queasy.”

 

A third round through the building. A third lot of saved Gothamites.

 

“Okay everyone, that’s it. I hope this doesn’t put you off museums.”

 

Once he’d got all the civilians out of immediate danger he grimly considered what he could do with the Man-Bat population. The GCPD was already pulling up with a wail of sirens and he was sure they would open fire on the fanged, winged, horde the first chance they got. He couldn’t let that happen. Not when he knew there was a chance they were still people under those wings. That perhaps, like Langstrom, they could be cured of the mutation. Saved.

 

He had two options. Either he had to confine them or… his eyes caught on what looked like a leader shrieking and flapping among the throng in the middle of the ruined reception area. It had two swords, a green silk sash knotted around its hips, and a weighty gold amulet hanging around its neck.

 

It was worth a try.

 

Clark flew in the open ceiling, grabbed the leader, and hoisted him into the air. It shrieked and clawed uselessly at his skin.

 

To his surprise it spoke. “Thhiieeeffff!!! Sssssupperrman!!!”

 

“Call them off!” He responded.

 

“Thhiieeeffff!!!” It threw back its head and let out a lout rattling shriek. “DiieeeeeeEEE!!”

 

“Yes! They will die! Do you understand? The police will shoot them out of the sky unless you call them off! Whatever you’re stealing isn’t worth dying for. We can help you. We can get rid of the mutation.”

 

Its claws snapped on his arm as it laughed, an ugly pitching sound. “Thhieefff Ssssupermannn ddiesssss!”

 

“Police. Will. Kill. You.” Clark tried to make it clear. “You don’t have to d—”

 

The amulet around the Man-Bat’s neck pulsed and a bolt of energy surged out around the room. Clark felt it wash over him, felt every fibre of his being repulse with a surge of agony at the touch of magic, and then felt himself drop. They both crash landed onto the ground, the Man-Bat’s wing shattered with an audible crackling sound, and Clark cried out in surprise at the jar of pain that shot through him on impact.

 

But he couldn’t waste time lingering on the pain. The Man-Bats were everywhere, approaching. He needed to get back up in the air. He needed to…

 

He couldn’t fly. He tried again. Nothing. Why wouldn’t he fly? Why…?

 

There was a bit of glass sticking out of his hand around a well of blood.

 

Realisation struck with an alien surge of fear; not the kind he was used to experiencing very often. The kind he hadn’t felt since Doomsday. The kind that narrowed his vision and made the world quake around him.

 

_No powers._

 

He looked up at the army of Man-Bats flapping and cawing around him.

 

_No backup._

 

At the leader standing before him, broken wing hanging limp at his side, and sword in hand.

 

_No escape._

 

At the tip of that blade as it came towards him.

 

_No… no!_

 

He forced himself to his feet, forced himself into the combat posture Bruce had taught him, forced his eyes onto that of the leader looking at him with animalistic bloodlust. “No!”

 

“Ffforrr Leeviatthhhan!!!”


	5. Chapter 5

Rings. Lots of rings. _Endless_ rings. More rings than he had ever seen in his life.

 

Gold ones, silver ones, diamond ones. Ones that came in ones, and twos, and sets of three. Ones covered in gems and ones without any. Ones with messages engraved into them and ones with variations of the different caste symbols worked into the metal. More rings that he thought existed on the face of the planet somehow packed into this one store.

 

_Fuck._

 

Jason stood amongst the glass display cases like he was in the middle of a mine field.

 

Dick wanted rings. Of course he wanted rings. They were getting married. It was okay to want rings. Jason could even get him rings. But Dick didn’t tell him what kind of rings he wanted. Somehow he had to guess. Just like the location, the food, and even the fucking flowers. How the fuck was he meant to have an opinion on flowers? Who had an opinion on flowers? Dick, apparently. And somehow he was meant to share that opinion. Just like serviettes, suits, and table settings. He was meant to make a choice and if it was the wrong choice Dick would smile and nod but his eyes would be dead with disappointment. And this wasn’t flowers anymore. This was _rings. The rings._

 

_Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!_

 

“Can I help you, sir?” The shop assistant approached. She was a tiny omega woman with pursed lips and blonde bundles of hair braided and looped in a crown around her head. She tugged at her sleeve, clearly unhappy to be forced to approach him. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

 

“I, eh, need wedding rings,” he muttered.

 

“What kind?”

 

Jason stared at her. “Kind?”

 

“We have wedding bands,” she waved her hand half-heartedly at the display beside her. “Gold is most popular.”

 

He looked in the indicated cabinet.

 

After a while it became clear the woman was waiting for something from him.

 

“Can I, um, see those ones better?” He waved at a random pair.

 

She looked, frowned, and turned back to him; her gaze not quite meeting his. “That set is designed for a female couple, sir.”

 

It looked the same as the ones around it.

 

“What about that one?” He took another stab in the dark.

 

“That’s usually more a beta ring.”

 

“That’s fine.”

 

Genuine surprise filtered across the woman’s face for a moment before she looked away, lips pinched. “Oh, well. Your partner is a beta then? I suppose that could work.”

 

“You think?”

 

“Do you like it?” She asked.

 

“I… guess…”

 

“Do you think your partner would like it?”

 

“I…” he stared hopelessly at the two bands. They were identical, gold, and five hundred dollars each. Is that what Dick wanted? Or did he want something different? Something a different colour? Or something with gems?

 

How the fuck was he meant to know?

 

The shop assistant’s eyes flicked towards him a moment, not quite meeting his gaze. “Perhaps you should come back with your partner,” she suggested meekly.

 

“He told me to buy what I want,” Jason muttered.

 

“Oh…” she didn’t move. “Okay.”

 

Silence.

 

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t fuck up again. Not on something as important as the rings.

 

Jason spun on his heel, navigated out of the shop, and pulled his phone from his pocket the moment he stepped into the mall. Dick answered on the third ring.

 

_“Hey. Good thing you called. I forgot your new ID and I need it for…”_

 

“What rings do you want?”

 

A pause.

 

_“It’s… it’s not that important, Jay. Get something you like. I’m sure I’ll like whatever you like. They’re just rings.”_

 

“But what do _you_ want?”

 

_“Seriously, it’s cool. I’ll be happy with what you pick out.”_

 

Again. “I need to know what you want, Dick.”

 

A pause. Long. Ugly. _“You really want me to pick them? You don’t care?”_

 

“I want what you want.”

 

 _“But you don’t…?”_ A long silence. _“Okay,”_ Dick said, that bleak black disappointment colouring his voice again. _“Okay, I’ll handle it.”_

 

Jason felt something inside him wrench and wither. “Look, you know I ju—”

 

_“Catch you later.”_

 

“Hey, don’t you need…?”

 

The line went dead.

 

Jason swallowed the bile that prickled at the back of his tongue, shoved his phone into his pocket, and strode through the shopping centre.

 

He was letting Dick down. He knew he was letting Dick down. He hated that he was letting Dick down. But he didn’t know how to give the man what he wanted. Not when it came to this wedding. All Jason had wanted in proposing to the man had been him. Dick Grayson. Forever. But Dick wanted more. He wanted the ceremony, the decoration… and that was fine. He could have it. Jason would even help him get it… as long as Dick told him what to get.

 

But Dick wanted Jason to pick. And not just pick anything. Pick the right thing.

 

How was he meant to do that?

 

How could he survive another month of this?

 

How could…?

 

A familiar scent prickled his nose. He stopped, almost caused a collision as people flowed by him, and looked around the crowded mall. Faces swum together, scents muddied into a mess of indistinguishable smells, and voices rose to be heard above each other. Among it he spotted a figure in a massive knitted sweater and backpack wriggling against the tide of bodies. Was that… “Tim?”

 

The face turned towards him, eyes widening in shock. “J-Jason? I…” The boy clutched piece of paper to his chest and forced a smile. “W-what’s up?”

 

“What’s up?” the crowd kept swarming around them; giving Jason a wide berth but bumping unapologetically against Tim. “Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”

 

The boy stared at him. “It’s Saturday.”

 

Jason frowned. “What are you doing here?”

 

Tim licked his lips. “Nothing just… hanging.”

 

“Hanging with who?”

 

“No one.”

 

He looked at him for a long time. “That alien not-clone is here, isn’t he.” Not a question.

 

“No!” Tim struggled to fold and fit his piece of paper into his pocket. “He’s not. Promise. I was just… in the area.” He finally managed to tuck the page away. “What are you doing here?”

 

He grimaced. “I got to buy Dick a ring.”

 

“Oh.” Tim’s expression changed. “Oh, that’s cool. Did you get anything yet?”

 

“No… no he’s going to buy it now.”

 

Tim frowned. “Why?”

 

“I… I couldn’t…”

 

A reserved look crossed his face. “You know,” he coughed. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this but Alfred told me that Barbara told him that Dick was annoyed at you about the wedding.” He shrugged. “If you buy the rings that’ll sort of fix that wouldn’t it? Why don’t you just buy them?”

 

Jason stared at him. “Dick said that?”

 

Tim bit his lip. “Well… no. I don’t think so. I think Barbara did. But Barbara knows. I mean, she knows everything. That’s why she was Oracle.” He was bumped by someone in the crowd. “Hey… I… Can’t we go sit down or something?”

 

Jason flicked his eyes around at the crowd. “Yeah…” he strode towards him. “Come on.” The moment the omega was safely within his bubble of personal space he began leading him to a nearby food court squashed at the side of the massive mall. Tim walked close at his side, clearly grateful to be out of the mass of people, and slumped down into one of the metal chairs once they arrived.

 

It had been weeks since the kid’s last heat so, on a hunch, Jason bought a jumbo meal at the nearest shop and watched Tim plough greedily into it. He was halfway through it before Jason spoke.

 

“Is that all Alfred said?”

 

“About that? I guess.” Tim turned to the table next to them and politely asked for napkins. Jason watched as the two betas eagerly passed over the whole dispenser along with the salt on the suggestion that it would go with his meal.

 

Jason. “So they didn’t say anything else about the wedding?”

 

“I don’t know. I actually don’t know that much about the wedding. I’m not that involved.”

 

“But they told you?” He pushed. “I mean, they talked to you.”

 

“I… yeah. They were talking about it and I asked. I mean… I’m not that involved but it’s kind of exciting I guess.” He picked up another handful of chips and chomped through them. “I’ve never been to a wedding before.”

 

“So, you like all this wedding stuff? You get it?”

 

Tim shrugged. “I suppose.”

 

“Really?”

 

“There isn’t that much to get,” Tim muttered. “It’s just aesthetics mostly. But I guess the rings would be more important. They’re meant to last forever, and all.”

 

Jason stared at him for a long time. Thinking. “What kind of rings would you buy?”

 

Tim blinked. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know what you like.”

 

“But, if this was your wedding. If you were me.”

 

Tim contemplated this for a long time. “Probably just wedding bands, maybe something a bit flashier for Dick. If you’re getting one too I would make them match and maybe put something personal onto them. Something just for you two.” He shrugged.

 

“What kind of something?”

 

“Like… I don’t know. It would have to be personal. But that might be a little too much anyway. But then again, this is Dick Grayson we’re talking about. He likes too much. Err on the side of too much rather than too little.” He munched through another handful of chips. “These are really good.”

 

Jason stared at him. “Come with me.” Stood.

 

Tim frowned. “But we just got here.”

 

“I’ll get you more when we’re done. Come on.” He pulled him to his feet. The paper that had been poorly stuffed into the boy’s pocket fell out and Tim lunged to retrieve it.

 

Jason watched him. “What is that?”

 

“N-nothing.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Jason looked over Tim’s shoulder as if something had caught his attention. When the omega turned to see what it was he snatched the rumbled folded slip of paper.

 

“Hey!”

 

It was a doctor’s prescription with an attached repeat. “Depo-Provera?” He read it aloud and frowned at Tim. “What’s that?”

 

Tim yanked the paper back. “It’s nothing!” He hissed. “I just…” he looked around. “I w-was sick the other night. I, um, ate something weird at school. It’s just something to settle my stomach.”

 

Jason studied him suspiciously. “You’re eating fine.”

 

“But… sorry, it’s a headache thing. I…”

 

“Alfred has all the headache stuff at home. Why would you come here?”

 

Tim looked panicked for a moment. “I… I didn’t…”

 

“You’re not getting into some weird drug shit, right?”

 

“No!”

 

“Cause, you know, my mum did an—”

 

“I’m not! I…” Tim licked his lips, looked around, and seemed to come to a decision. He stepped closer. “I get… well…” he trailed off.

 

“Yeah?”

 

Blushing. “It’s… omega stuff.”

 

“What kind of omega stuff?”

 

“Like, my peri—”

 

“Okay!” Jason grabbed his hand and led him away. “Forget it.”

 

“It’s not that b—”

 

“Don’t tell me,” Jason told him. “I don’t want to know.”

 

This time Tim wrestled his bag around to his front and put the paper – the script – carefully inside. “Where are we going?”

 

“I need you to help me pick a ring.”

 

Tim stared and slowed. “What? But I thought you said Dick was doing it.”

 

“You also said I should do it,” Jason reminded him. “Come on.”

 

“But…”

 

“You know what he likes. Come on.”

 

By the time they were back at the store Tim looked decidedly unhappy about this arrangement and was tugging at the sides of his sweater. The shop assistant from before was behind the counter toying absently with her phone and a new woman – tall, dark haired, and impossibly balanced on massive heels – approached.

 

“Hello! Can I help you two at all?”

 

Tim was practically hiding behind Jason, trying to look uninvolved.

 

“Wedding rings,” Jason muttered.

 

She beamed. Her lips were red, hair an artistic mess, and scent the open flavour of a mid level beta. “Of course. Right this way.”

 

Jason dragged Tim after him.

 

“What did you have in mind?”

 

“Tim?” Jason bounced the question.

 

“I…” the boy shot him an exasperated look. “I guess… wedding bands but not boring ones.”

 

“Do you have any colour or material preference?”

 

No answer.

 

“Tim?” Jason pushed.

 

“I… no not…” the boy’s eyes lit on the cabinet as they approached the display. “Wow they’re… what’s that one?”

 

The woman smiled, body turned towards Tim, and they started talking. Jason watched as if from the outside, grateful that Tim seemed at least to be able to tell the different styles apart and was listening with interest to the merits of each different material.

 

He pulled out his phone and began to text Dick.

 

_Do you still need my fake name?_

 

It took almost fifteen minutes for the man to reply. It didn’t matter. Tim hadn’t moved.

 

_No, it’s okay, I found it, Jackson._

 

 _Never call me that._ He replied.

 

 _Except when I say ‘I do’._ Dick specified. _Got it, Mr Billing._

_You’re an arse._

“Hey, Jay,” Tim held out his hand, each finger sparkling with diamonds. “Guess which one costs the most.”

 

“That one,” he took a random guess.

 

Tim frowned. “How did you know?”

 

“I just know.”

 

“What are you doing?” The boy looked at his phone. “Mr Billing?”

 

“It’s just a name.”

 

“Change it.”

 

“I can’t.”

 

“Except you can at the wedding. Tell Dick you want to be a Grayson. He’ll like that.”

 

Jason stared at him. “You think?”

 

“Yeah. And why not change it? It’s a fake name anyway.” He looked at the lady. “Do you have like a more beta version of this one? … Ugh. No. The omega one is better.”

 

 _About the name,_ Jason typed. _I was thinking I could change it._

 

Dick. _To what?_

 

_Jackson Grayson._

 

No answer.

 

_Is that okay?_

 

 _Yeah._ The man typed. _That’s okay._

A pause.

Dick. _Really. Yeah. It is. You can do that. If you want to._

Another pause.

 

_Okay, I mean. It’s really okay._

 

 _Okay._ He responded.

_Where are you?_ Dick texted him.

 

“I can wear this one on my thumb,” Tim noted as the shop assistant laughed. “My hands aren’t that little are they?”

 

“Here,” the shop assistant took it and unapologetically pushed it passed Jason’s knuckle. “It suits him, yes?”

 

Tim regarded it critically. “I don’t know.”

 

Immediately the shop assistant had it off and a horde of new rings on the glass counter. “You’re right. He needs something more…” she fished for a word.

 

“Powerful,” Tim filled the gap.

 

“Precisely.”

 

 _Out._ He responded to Dick.

 

_Where?_

 

_I’m buying rings._

 

Beat. _But, half an hour ago you said you weren’t._

_I changed my mind._ Jason replied.

_You’re seriously buying the rings? Right now?_

_Yes. I’ll show you what I get tonight. You can tell me if you like it._

 

 _Sure! I can’t wait!_ A gap. _Thanks Jason. I know this is rough right now. But it really means a lot that you’re trying._ Another gap. _I love you._

 

 _You too._ Jason responded feeling strangely lightheaded and guilty at the same time.

 

It took another twenty minutes for Tim to settle and drop two rings into the palm of Jason’s hands.

 

Nervously. “Just… if he doesn’t like them…”

 

Jason looked at the pair in his hand. “I’ll take the fall.”

 

Tim nodded gratefully as they made it to the register.

 

The two bands looked near identical to Jason but one was seven hundred and the other just over a thousand. He assumed that was the one for Dick. It was white gold, the rim festooned with inlaid diamonds, and when he turned it light flecks of royal blue danced over its skin. The other was made of the same material minus the gems but was bolder and thicker with a matte finish that refused to sparkle.

 

“I must say,” the woman said as she took Jason’s – Jackson Billing’s – card. “You two look adorable together.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“We’re…” Tim began to protest.

 

“And it’s so sweet that you’re staying off the bite until the ceremony. So few couples do that now days.”

 

Tim was blushing as he touched the side of his neck.

 

Jason scowled. Was she blind? How could she look at Tim and think he was anywhere close to ready to get married yet? He was in high school, had _just_ turned seventeen, and… When did he get so tall? Jason looked at the omega beside him. Really looked at him for the first time in a long time. He was almost Dick’s height, his limbs had all pulled themselves into proportion, and the hard lines of his body spoke to a slim but muscular adult figure.

 

_Kid?_

 

 “T-thanks,” Tim accepted the rings in a paper bag. “I… um… I’m not…”

 

“I hope you enjoy the big day,” the woman gushed. “Congratulations.”

 

Tim was bright red now. “I… we’re not… bye…”

 

He fled the store as Jason retrieved his card and followed.

 

They met up again in the hallway. “I…” Tim was still red. “I don’t really look old enough to be with you do I? I mean, no offense, I get that you’re only twenty something but…”

 

Relief. “Nah, kid. She was blind. Come on.”

 

“You think? Like, it might have been my clothes or…?”

 

“Yeah.” Tried to make his voice sound convincing. “Yeah probably.”

 

Tim smiled thinly and tugged at his massive sweater and the shape of his jeans. “Yeah. That’s probably it.”

 

They found a nicer food court, he rebought the omega some lunch, and once Tim finished offered to drive him home. Tim looked down and shook his head. “I got to get the stuff from the pharmacy.”

 

“I could wait,” Jason told him.

 

“No it could take a while. I think we have to _talk_ about it. You can come if you want but…”

 

“No,” he gathered up the rings. “No, that’s fine. You can handle it. I’ll just head off.”

 

Tim bobbed his head. “Yeah.”

 

“And thanks, kid. I owe you.”

 

Softly. “No problem.”

 

He left Tim sitting alone in the middle of the crowded eating area, backpack on his lap, and an empty tray of food resting in front of him. The boy he used to play chess with transformed into a young man. Jason swallowed that thought as he left the mall and clambered down the stairs into the carpark. It took him almost an hour to get back to the manor. Once there he pulled into the garage, left the keys on the driver’s seat, and had just enough time to make it into the main upstairs living room and slump into an armchair by the low burning fire before Dick found him.

 

“Hey,” the beta slunk into the room. “I thought I heard you come in.”

 

Jason watched him approach, hesitate, and then swing a leg over Jason’s knees to straddle his lap. “Do you want to see the rings?” He muttered and settled a hand on the man’s hip.

 

Dick licked his lips and nodded. “Yeah. Is this…?” He fingered the paper bag.

 

Jason nodded. “If you don’t like them I can take them back. They’re not personally made or…”

 

“It’s okay,” Dick told him. “I’m sure they’re beautiful.” Visibly readied himself.

 

“You will tell me if you hate them, right?” Jason pushed. “It ain’t that much money, man. Not to us. I can get more.”

 

“It’s okay. I…” he reached into the bag and pulled out the box. Opened it. Stared.

 

“Are they…?”

 

Shocked. “They’re gorgeous.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah I…” Dick picked up the one intended for him and studied it. “Holy fuck. They’re actually… you picked these?”

 

“You like them?”

 

Dick tried to slip it onto his finger. He laughed. “Too small, Jay. What were you thinking? Who even has fingers this size?”

 

His heart sank. “You want something else.”

 

“No! No. I want you to go back and get the _exact_ same thing in a bigger size. Fuck, I can’t believe it’s… what made you pick white gold? That’s what it is, right? How many stones does it have? We could totally get the inside engraved with something. What do you think? We need to th—”

 

He hooked a hand behind Dick’s neck and pulled him forward to crush their lips together. The beta groaned, his whole body twitching and shifting forward until their pelvises were against each other and tongues tangled together. He growled with primal satisfaction, thrust up against the weight of the man above him, and lost himself in everything Dick Grayson. Dick’s body tight and tense with greedy anticipation, hips just gyrating almost teasingly against him, and arms up as he gripped the back of the chair.

 

“Fuck I wanna fuck you,” Jason rasped as their lips parted and he gripped the man’s hips. “I want to fuck you so fucking hard.”

 

Dick grinned. A crooked smile that made his eyes sparkle and cheeks shine with colour. For once he didn’t say a word.

 

“Fuck,” Jason touched that smile, moved his lips, and worked a thumb between his teeth. Dick’s mouth opened for him, breath coming in a needy little noise that Jason will never get tired of hearing, and tongue flicked expertly against the invasion in a silent, goading, promise. It didn’t take a genius to know what Dick wanted. “I’m going to fuck that fucking mouth.” Jason decided. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me to fuck your face.”

 

Dick groaned. Sucked his thumb in earnest.

 

Jason hissed through his teeth as it hit him all over again, the blistering erotic realisation that Dick _liked_ this. He liked sucking cock. He liked _being told_ to suck cock. He liked getting fucked in the face. And, _fuck_ , he was good at it. Jason never much liked giving oral. It was a one sided, repetitive, and restrictive task. He never thought, before Dick, that he would really like receiving it that much either. Sure, it was nice, but there were better things he could be doing to a willing body.

 

Dick was slowly but surely bringing him around to the idea. And, once he knew about it, feeding the man’s oral fixation had become a strange acute kind of pleasure. One of the other unexpected prizes that had surfaced in the wake of the words ‘I love you’.

 

He shoved him off him.

 

Dick fell back onto the floor in front of the fire with a graceless thump, the paper bag and rings tumbling to the ground around him, and blinked up at Jason in shock. Jason stood and began to work his erection free from his pants.

 

Dick’s gaze sunk to watch the action, tongue darted across his lips.

 

“You want this, don’t you?”

 

“Yeah,” Dick said. “Yeah.”

 

Jason freed himself and Dick made a noise.

 

“You know,” voice hoarse. “I don’t say this enough, Jay. But you’ve really got a beautiful cock. I mean it. Really beautiful. Like, I just think about it sometimes.”

 

“Get on your knees,” Jason husked.

 

Dick slowly sat up and tucked his knees under himself; eyes locked onto the organ Jason fisted between his legs. “Crazy huh? But, I was just thinking about the Jackson Grayson thing you said and I know it’s just a fake name but that was so… and your _cock_. When I say it’s beautiful what I really mean is you’ve got the most gorgeous fucking cock in the whole world. I mean it. I’ve seen a few so I w—”

 

He stepped forward. Grabbed Dick’s hair at the back of his skull and pulled his head back. Dick opened his mouth, a silent pained gasp, and Jason pushed in.

 

 _Fuck_ … it was… indescribable.

 

Dick’s hands clawed forward; blindly attached themselves onto his hips and gripped him as he greedily swallowed around the length of cock in his mouth. Not wasting a second.

 

Jason let the beta suck him for a moment, let himself give into that sensation, and then tightened the hold he still had in the man’s hair, holding him in place as he thrust into him; penetrating beyond the reach of his tongue but withdrawing fast enough to stop the man from choking… not that Dick ever did. He gave him the briefest moment to recover just in case before he pushed into the back of his throat again.

 

Soon he was fucking into him like an animal. Fucking him with such a snap of his hips that if they weren’t holding onto each other like their lives depended on it, the motion would have broken them apart. Dick took it gleefully, clutched at him, and groaned in unbridled delight.

 

“Finally,” Jason croaked. “Found a way to shut you up.”

 

A noise that could have been laughter vibrated around the head of his cock.

 

_God._

 

He moaned, buckled forward, and rutted hopelessly into his mouth; growling as he felt the slide of the beta’s tongue encouraging him in deeper.

 

Dick eyes opened. That was what undid him. The sight of the beta – head back, and face red as his mouth was used – gazing up at him with eyes that sparkled with seductive light under a sheen of savage pleasure. His hands gripping Jason almost hard enough to bruise, his hips unashamedly humping up against his calf, and erection straining through his jeans.

 

He came; his whole body hunching forward to curl around Dick, knot ballooning out in the confines of his fist, and balls clenching tight as they shot hot ribbons into the beta’s throat.

 

“Fuck…” he staggered back and leant against the chair. Looked at him. “Fuck.”

 

Dick knelt; lips returning to the crooked smile, hair twisted at the back of his skull, and chin covered in come. It ran out the sides of his mouth, trickled in sticky white rivers over the bottom half of his face, and threatened to drip off the point of his jaw.

 

One more time. “Fuck.”

 

“I love it when you come for me,” Dick said, making no move to stand or clean his face.

 

“Do you want…?” Jason eyes danced down to Dick’s own obvious erection.

 

“Just sit,” Dick said, his own hand slipping below the waist of his jeans. “I want you to _watch_ m—”

 

The door opened.

 

Dick twisted towards the fire with a ragged gasp, hand abandoning his cock to desperately rub at the incriminating smears across his face. “J-just a second!”

 

Jason swore and tried to wrestle his cock and knot back into his pants. Bruce stood in the doorway and frowned as he scanned the room; completely ignoring them guiltily putting themselves to rights by the fire.

 

Dick. “S-sorry Bruce. We’ll get out of here. Just give us a second.” Still wiping at his face. “Sorry…”

 

Bruce, completely ignoring Dick, looked at Jason. A confused frown tugging the shape of his brows. Voice oddly quiet. “Where’s Clark?”

 

Dick. “I… I haven’t seen him. Wait, he flew off didn’t he? He’s probably still out Superman-ing.”

 

Bruce’s gaze moved off them, his stare glazed, and voice dead. “He left hours ago. He’s never gone for hours.”

 

“Just call him on the JL line,” Dick begged, still trying to straighten his clothes.

 

“It’s not responding.” Voice still oddly confused. “He only ever does that when he takes it out. He only takes it out when he’s home.” The omega looked down the hall, still searching for the missing man. “He’s not home.”

 

Dick paused.

 

Jason stared at the man. “You think something happened?”

 

Bruce looked at him and he saw the knowledge the man was fighting, refusing to accept, in his eyes. “Maybe…” Bruce rasped. “Maybe he’s in the study.” He moved to leave.

 

“Bruce,” Dick stopped him, voice soft. “He would hear you looking for him if he was in the house.”

 

Jason watched the omega’s face twist, his clung to confusion crushed as he gave into the realisation, unable to hold back the truth he’d been keeping at bay.

 

Everything happened very fast after that.

 

“Damian! Get down here!”

 

“Computer. Scan media outlets for ‘Superman’.”

 

“… taking the Batwing. Is Tim here?”

 

“Batman Inc. requesting any information on mass disasters…”

 

“Are you ready, Jay?”

 

“This is Batman calling Justice League. I need a location check on Superman.”

 

“Ready.”

 

_Fuck…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me for these cliffhangers (especially when they're the exact same cliffhangers as last time). Your comments for the last chapter were beautiful and thanks so much to all of you. They really help to keep me up late to finish this. :)


	6. Chapter 6

“I… I don’t know…”

 

“Think!”

 

“Please, Bruce, I don’t know.”

 

“Then look.”

 

“I am looking.”

 

“Then look harder! The answer is here. We’re not giving up until we find it.”

 

“But…” Tim stared at the mess of information on the counter in front of him. Leviathan. The whole investigation Bruce had been doing ripped open and scanned from end to end again and again. He saw paper trails cut short, aerial photos of cities with disaster areas outlined, and bits and pieces of love poetry dissected to death in the middle of the table. Before him was a list of all the cities that were attacked as well as the Batman Inc. agent they were after, if any. It all seemed so random. So pointless. “What if the answer isn’t here, Bruce? What if…?”

 

“It’s Leviathan! We know that! Dick found the banners.”

 

Tim didn’t want to say it. But he had to. They’d been fruitlessly pouring over this mismatched evidence for hours now. “We don’t know for sure that was where Clark went,” Tim reminded him.

 

“There were eye witnesses.”

 

“He might have just stopped over there on his way somewhere else. I don’t see how Man-Bats could have made him vanish without a trace and then go back to ripping apart the museum like nothing happened. We could be looking in the wrong area. Besides, if he was doing a job in Gotham surely he would have told you. He knows you don’t like other superheroes in your city.”

 

“He thought he would be back soon,” Bruce growled, eyes locked down at the assembled evidence before him. “He said that. He didn’t think he was going far or dealing with a large threat. It makes sense.”

 

“Except for the part that Clark isn’t there,” Tim protested.

 

“But he was!” Bruce yelled. “That was where he was going, that was where he disappeared, and that is where we’ve lost the trail. He wouldn’t have left the Man-Bats there to keep destroying the building. He wouldn’t have flown on. It’s Leviathan and I just need to figure out…”

 

“Master Bruce,” Alfred finally spoke up, voice soft. “Perhaps we need to take a break from this.” The butler stood at the end of the table, a list of Batman Inc. agents in front of him. Tim knew he was looking for a leak; for a way Leviathan might have found out who Batman was and used to be. Tim didn’t think he would find one. The organisation was so new and all the agents hardened vigilantes that Bruce knew and had screened with a thoroughness abnormal even for him. It was a desperate move. All of this was a desperate move. Grasping at straws.

 

Bruce glared down at the poetry in front of him. “We don’t know the answer yet.”

 

“What are you hoping to find?” Tim asked. “Clark’s location?”

 

Bruce shot him a blistering look. “My enemy,” he answered. “Once I know who, and why, I’ll be about to find out where. The love poet—”

 

“What if it’s just love poetry?” Tim said. “What if it doesn’t mean anything?”

 

“It has to mean something!”

 

The cave dipped into silence. Bruce’s eyes never left his work.

 

Tim hated that he couldn’t help him. Dick, Jason, and Damian were out fishing for clues but he’d been wrangled in here to help with the detective side of things. It was an honour in a way but, if there was some kind of answer in the information before him; some magic sentence that would make all this okay, then he couldn’t see it. He felt like he was looking at a puzzle with over half the pieces missing. And, what was worse, it might not even be the right puzzle.

 

The link to Leviathan was tenuous at best. As was the belief that they would expect and prepare for an encounter with Superman.

 

Clark could have flown somewhere else unexpectedly. He could have been called away on some other disaster. He could be fighting Lex Luthor, or Braniac, or General Lane’s latest monster in an unknown location. Maybe that fight was in a place cut of JL communications or maybe a blow had damaged the receiver. He hadn’t yet been missing for six hours. He could still just fly in the door. Clark might still be okay.

 

He wished he believed that.

 

The likelihood that Clark was in serious trouble was mounting with every moment. When he was first told of the man’s absence upon arriving home he could have believed something had held him up. Now, it was passed midnight, Clark had been gone for too long, something had happened. But, whatever condition Clark was in, Tim wasn’t sure Leviathan was to blame. As much as Bruce kept insisting it made sense… it didn’t.

 

Leviathan was attacking Batman Inc. not Superman, not even the Batman family. Why would they be armed against Superman? And, if they were, why weren’t they finding any weapon of the kind among the captured Man-Bats? This was a predictable attack – an attack Bruce _had_ predicted – and Clark had interrupted it. Everything from that point was speculation; wild, desperate. The seeking of a man who had lost his mate.

 

Tim’s phone buzzed. He wriggled it out of his pocket and checked the message. “Kon’s here.”

 

Bruce looked up. “Did he bring Martha?”

 

“I told him to,” Tim reminded him. “Just like you said.”

 

“Good,” Bruce’s gaze returned to his unsolvable puzzle. “Get him down here. Whoever this is they knew to go after Clark and clearly had some method of overpowering him. We can’t leave them unprotected.”

 

“By your leave, sir,” Alfred spoke up. “I will go up and make sure they have a comfortable rooms.”

 

Bruce grunted and didn’t look up as they left.

 

“Do you think it’s Leviathan?” Tim whispered.

 

“I wish I knew, Master Timothy. Truly, I wish I knew.”

 

Tim walked beside Alfred they made their way out of the batcave, up the spiralling stone steps, and into the study Tim and Clark used to play chess in before he worked out the man was letting him win. From there it was only a short walk to the massive front door in the dimly lit foyer. The moment Alfred opened it Kon and Martha spilled in. Martha’s pants were tucked into a pair of aged working boots, and top half covered in a jacket big enough to hang down to her knees. Kon wore enough hoodies to hide the shape of his body and his sneakers were wet. Their scents swirled together. High level alpha and mid level beta. Both coloured with a putrid vein of mutual fear.

 

“Mrs K—”

 

“Oh stop that, Alfred,” the woman interrupted him. “How many times to I have to tell you to call me Min? We’re family now, for God’s sake.” It was the sharpest Tim had ever heard her speak. Voice slightly off kilter. Slightly unstable.

 

Alfred. “Forgive me.”

 

“Has there been any news?” The woman asked. “Do you know where he is?”

 

The butler shook his head. “I’m afraid not yet.”

 

Martha ingested this news with small pained noise and shrugged off the outer jacket. “Where’s Bruce?”

 

“He’s downstairs,” Alfred offered. “I can take you there.”

 

“Yes.” Martha was already striding into the house, silver hair spilling out around her face in feathery whips. “Let’s go.”

 

Kon stepped forward to intercept Tim before he could follow. “Are you okay?”

 

“Are you okay?” Tim bounced the question.

 

“No.”

 

“Me neither.” He raked a hand through his fringe. “I mean, I know Clark and I were never the closest but… he’s kind of part of everything here. A big part. Even if he’s not part of the pack.” He watched Alfred and Martha disappear deeper into the house. “This is so messed up.”

 

“He’s coming back,” Kon said.

 

It took Tim an age before he realised that was meant to be a question. Kon was looking at him, waiting, and expecting him to lead him now of all times; to reassure and comfort him. It was a bizarre reversal of roles he had come to almost expect from the young alpha and even seen it replicated in Clark. A small undercurrent that spoke to a more submissive nature than was typical of alphas… at least when it came to handling real world issues. In the bedroom Kon was all alpha and his need to protect and possess shone through in other situations as well. But, right here right now he was looking at Tim like he wanted to be told it was okay and how he could help. Perhaps it was some alien instincts, perhaps it was just Clark and Kon’s personalities, or perhaps it was that they didn’t feel the need to adhere so closely to the strong alpha image. It didn’t matter. Kon needed support, a lifeline. Tim needed it too. His pack was under attack and a small tug of what might have been omega instinct, might have been a raw tendril of fear, or might have been the need for companionship made him yearn for the protective indomitable embrace of the boy beside him.

 

He took the alpha’s arm and pulled it around his shoulder, drawing what comfort he could from the feel of the muscle bound limb around him. It wasn’t much. Half his pack was gone, his leader wasn’t thinking rationally, and Clark was missing. Nothing was right. But it was something.

 

“Come on. Let’s go downstairs.”

 

For the first time he didn’t disentangle with Kon when they joined the rest of the family. For the first time it didn’t seem to matter.

 

Martha was hugging Bruce and talking about the baby, Bruce was still looking at the evidence over her shoulder, and Alfred was requesting an update from the team in the field.

 

Dick’s voice came over the loud speaker. _“...still looking but, honestly, we can’t tell much around all the rubble. If there was evidence it’s probably buried really deep. It’s as if… Robin! Get back…! Shit. Keep an eye on him, Wingman.”_

 

Jason’s voice. _“You’re Batman. He’s your problem. Not mine.”_

 

 _“Gee, thanks for the backup,”_ Dick snapped back. _“Do I have to lift this by myself or is that Batman’s job too?”_

 

The sound of a heave, rocks shifting, and then something crashing on the ground.

 

 _“But, yeah,”_ Dick spoke up again. _“Nothing new. We’ll keep at it and the police are helping. I’ll call in if anything changes.”_

 

“Thank y—” Alfred began.

 

 _“Robin!”_ Dick yelled. _“I told you to…! Sorry. I got to…”_ The line went dead.

 

“They’ll find something,” Martha said to Bruce. “I’m sure they will.”

 

“All mine was thine…” Bruce muttered, reading the poetry. “You left me, sweet, two legacies…” His eyes flicked to another. “My true-love hath my heart and I have his…”

 

“Bruce?”

 

“If we divide them into classic and modern it…” he trailed off.

 

“What does it do?” Alfred asked.

 

“…No… nothing… maybe it’s the authors themselves. Shakespeare, Sidney, Dickinson.” His eyes lit on a new poem. “Proud of my broken heart, since thou didst break it. That’s Dickenson again. What makes her special?”

 

Tim. “Bruce… what if the poetry means nothing?”

 

Without turning around. “We’ve explained everything else. I has to be the poetry.”

 

“But…”

 

“I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste,” Bruce recited the words. “That’s Solomon. It’s the oldest one here. If we put them in order… no. Maybe if…”

 

Tim felt nervous, scared, and angry all at once. The feeling was a bubbling frothy mess inside him. Putrid and wrong but boiling over to splash out onto his tongue. “Bruce!” He yelled. “The poetry doesn’t mean anything! So some nut job thinks they’re in love with Batman. So what?”

 

“This is the only lead we have! I’m not abandoning it until I know it’s dead! There is a lady sweet and—”

 

“Bruce,” Martha said softly, stopping him. “It’s okay. It’s…”

 

“No, it isn’t, because I haven’t figured it out yet,” he growled. Turned back to the poems. “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour…” he trailed off. “What if it is just love poetry?” He muttered.

 

Tim felt a surge of sickening relief. “Yeah,” he croaked. “Yeah, it is.”

 

“Who has Dick challenged recently who might be in love with him?”

 

“I don’t…”

 

“No,” Kon muttered as if the words hurt him, as if fighting against a dam to speak them. “No, that’s wrong. You’re meant to be getting Clark back. So what if someone fell in love with Dick? That’s not what happened to Clark. What happened to Clark?”

 

A pause. “Levia—” Bruce began.

 

“What if it’s not Leviathan?” Tim pushed. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would they go after Clark?”

 

Bruce leant against the table, defeated. “I don’t know.”

 

“It could be someone else,” Tim reinstated his argument. “ _Anyone_ else. Someone with means and motive.”

 

“If it is then what can I do?” Bruce asked to the air in front of him.

 

Alfred. “The Justice League is loo—”

 

“I don’t give a damn about the Justice League! What can _I_ do? I’m not just going to sit here and wait like a bitch in a petticoat! I can’t… I need to…” Bruce pressed a hand to his brow. Softer. “I need to help him.”

 

Martha. “This isn’t helping him.”

 

He turned, looked directly into her eyes, and – finally – returned her embrace. Martha sunk into his arms gratefully, her narrow build near swallowed by his muscular size, and seemed to let out a great shuddering sigh. They were the two people in the world who were hurt the most by Clark’s absence. The two people, Tim realised, would never recover if he didn’t come back. Perhaps they saw that in each other, perhaps that was why they clung so fiercely. Perhaps it was the same reason why Tim suddenly needed Kon’s arm around him.

 

“Alfred,” Bruce looked up, a strange chilling hardness in his eyes. “Do Martha and Conner have rooms made up?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“See to it that happens.”

 

“Yes.” Alfred stepped forward. “Is there any rooms in particular you would like set aside?” It was not a question the kind the butler would usually ask. Alfred ran the household with deft and hard won skill. He would never usually hand over such an important decision into Bruce’s hands. But this wasn’t a normal situation and Bruce, like the rest of them, needed a distraction.

 

“It’s too late to put them on the east wing,” Bruce muttered. “We’ll never heat up those rooms so late. Not with the easterly winds.”

 

“Tim’s on the east wing,” Kon muttered.

 

“My room’s already warmed up, Kon,” he told him. “My heater’s on a timer. Jason and Dick’s rooms are on the west wing and you can see Gotham tower from the window. It looks pretty if it’s all lit up.” He forced a smile.

 

“Do we have two guest bedrooms on the west wing?” Bruce asked with a frown.

 

“Five, sir.”

 

“Get the nicest two ready.”

 

“I’ll help you,” Martha decided and detached herself from Bruce to walk beside the butler. “I’m good with chores. God knows why, my parents never made me do anything. Johnathan wouldn’t let me get away with that with Clark though, oh no.” Her smile was tight and fake. An ugly adornment. “He was right. You’ve got to earn your keep. It’s only the right thing to…” they moved up the stairs and voices trailed away.

 

Bruce didn’t move.

 

Tim had never seen him look so lost. The usual sharpness to his gaze wandering, one hand hugging his belly to himself, and stance hunched. He watched as Bruce tapped an unseen transceiver in his ear.

 

“Any leads, Diana?”

 

He didn’t need to hear the answer to know by the man’s posture what it was.

 

“That’s okay. Just keep looking.”

 

“Tim,” Kon whispered.

 

“What?”

 

He tugged him towards the back of the cave.

 

Tim followed numbly. They didn’t go far. Just enough to slip out of Bruce’s immediate eye line. Once there Kon pulled him into his arms in earnest, limbs crushing painfully tight around him.

 

“I love you.”

 

“Kon…” he gasped. “This isn’t really...”

 

“It’s the time,” Kon promised. “It is. It really is.”

 

Tim opened his mouth to protest, stopped, and sunk into the embrace. After a while he spoke. “Kon I… I went to the doctor today.”

 

“Why?”

 

Tim licked his lips. How could he say this? Was now even the time to say this? But he needed to. It felt like a lie not telling Kon.

 

The young alpha and he had been using nothing but condoms since they shared their virginity with each other. Kon had never questioned it. Had never asked for anything different. Tim was glad. The birth control pill required he take it daily for it to be effective… even days he was in heat. Alfred provided him with food and medicine when in heat. If he was on the pill he would have to give it to Alfred. Alfred would no doubt tell Bruce and Bruce would probably tell Jason. No. It wasn’t an option. Not if he didn’t want to advertise his sexual activity to the whole pack. He needed something more discrete.

 

The doctor had injected him with a dose of Depo-Provera. It was a three month contraceptive and as long as he didn’t give Bruce reason to look for it in his bloodwork there was no way his pack could prove he was on it.

 

Three months. He and Kon had three months.

 

He’d never had sex without condoms. Would it feel different? By all accounts alphas preferred it but he hadn’t heard anything about what it did or didn’t do for an omega. Would it be better? The same? He couldn’t imagine how it would be worse… but even that thought had a question mark hanging behind it.

 

“I was thinking…” he said softly. “About, you know, sex. I was thinking we could change it a bit.”

 

Kon was frowning. “You want to change it? Like, how we do it?”

 

“No… yes… look, this is the worst time to talk about this.”

 

“I like the way we do sex.” Kon said softly, sadly.

 

“I do t—”

 

“No, you don’t. You just said you didn’t and you haven’t let me touch you in ages.”

 

Tim stared at him. “I’ve wanted to Kon.”

 

“You didn’t the other night.”

 

“My pack was there! I’m not going to have sex when my pack’s _right there_. And, you know, if you made an actual effort to seriously get to know and get along with my pack maybe they wouldn’t hate the idea of us together so much.” He sucked in a sharp breath, willing himself to seize control over his voice. “But,” he rasped. “I do like sex with you and I know it’s been a while.”

 

“But you want to change it,” he said. Unconvinced.

 

“K—”

 

“Okay. That’s okay. What do you want to do different?”

 

“No, let me say this,” Tim said, suddenly desperate to finish. “I know it’s been ages since we had sex but I… I’m not like Bart. I don’t always want it. And I’m not like you. I don’t build up to wanting it more and more. Sometimes I really want it and sometimes I don’t as much.” He stared up into Kon’s eyes. Trying to make him understand. “A-and doing it where I can get caught or in trouble, or where my pack might see isn’t hot for me; it’s just scary.”

 

Kon’s voice was a monotone when he replied. “What do you want to do different?”

 

This wasn’t going how he wanted it to go. It was so far from what he had planned it was almost laughable.

 

“I…” he looked down. “No, this isn’t the time. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” He didn’t want to tell Kon about their three months of condom free sex. Not like this. Not when they were both worried about Clark and after such an unpleasant conversation. It had meant to be a romantic _sexy_ gesture. The kind Kon made all the time; when he tried to cook for him, when he became Tim’s very own ‘personal flying elevator’, and the goodnight kisses out his window. Tim had never been able to do that, never been able to give Kon the feeling of being truly loved and lusted after in the way Kon gave it to him. The best he had been able to do was stumble through a clunky flirt which he was pretty sure Kon never even realised was meant to be a pick up.  “Sorry.” He pulled himself out of Kon’s arms. “W-we’ll talk about this later.” Later when Clark was safe, they were happy, and he might have a chance at turning this into the gift it was meant to be. “Okay?”

 

“Okay,” Kon mumbled, those eerie unearthly eyes shining strangely in the dim light.

 

“Thank you,” he sighed and walked back towards the main body of the cave.

 

Bruce hadn’t moved.

 

“Hey,” Tim approached. “Are you okay?”

 

“Ezhou.”

 

Tim blinked. “Huh?”

 

“It’s a city in the Hubei province, China,” Bruce muttered. “There is no Batman Inc. agent there. It got attacked by Leviathan anyway.”

 

“Bruce…” Tim started.

 

“I’ve been so focused on the poetry,” the man said softly. “And on the cities that have agents… I haven’t thought about the cities that were attacking without agents.”

 

“Bruce, it doesn’t…” he tried to reason with him.

 

“There were seven. Each attacked exactly a day and an hour apart. In order the cities that were attacked without Batman Inc. agents were Damascus, Edinburgh, Vancouver, Oklahoma City, Lahore, Ezhou, and Buenos Aires.

 

“I know. I was looking at it before,” Tim reminded him. “So?”

 

“I know who Leviathan is,” Bruce said just as Tim heard Kon come up behind him.

 

“What? How? Who?”

 

“Damascus, Edinburgh, Vancouver, Oklahoma City, Lahore, Ezhou, and Buenos Aires,” the man said the list again. “The first letter of every city.”

 

Tim thought about it. “Devoleb?

 

“Backwards.”

 

“Bel—” Tim blinked. “Beloved.”

 

“Leviathan isn’t in love with Dick. She’s in love with me.” Bruce said.

 

“She?”

 

“She found out about Clark. Drew him out. Attacked him.”

 

“But… wait, who are we talking about? And you’re not public with Clark for this reason. How could she have found out about Clark?”

 

Bruce looked at him and there was something agonised in his eyes. Something that had been dealt a mortal blow. “She’s Damian’s mother.”

 

Tim’s eyes widened. “Talia? You’re talking about Talia? As in Talia _al Ghul_ Talia? You think Damian told her?”

 

No answer.

 

“No.” Tim shook his head, rejecting the idea. “He loves you. He loves you more than anything. You’re his dad way more than Talia was ever his mum. He wouldn’t…”

 

“He hates Clark,” Bruce said softly.

 

Tim was still shaking his head blindly from side to side. “No. I know I don’t get along with him. I know he attacked me and has a habit of beheading this… but he wouldn’t. He’s pack. Clark’s family.”

 

Kon bolted across the room, slammed into the computer panel with a loud crash, and opened communications with the team again. “Where’s Damian?!”

 

Dick’s voice. _“Wha—Superboy. Ease up on the names. He ran off ages ago. What are you doing on this line?”_

 

“Where?!”

 

Jason. _“Fuck off. We’re working.”_

 

Dick. _“Robin’s on this line too. Ask him.”_

 

Jason. _“Huh. No he isn’t. He took his line out when you wouldn’t shut up.”_

 

_“He did?”_

 

Kon. “Tell me where he is!”

 

_“Okay. Calm down. I’ll just track… huh. That’s weird. He’s not showing up on my GPS. Hey Robin! Are you…”_

 

The muted sounds of what could have been a police officer.

 

Dick. _“…he went where?”_

 

More mumbling.

 

_“Uh, okay I’m going to go look for him. You stay here Wingman. Keep digging until you find something.”_

 

Jason. _“Fan-fucking-tastic.”_

 

_“Robin’s gone AWAL but I’m going to go if I can find him. This is pretty stressful on the kid, right.”_

 

Kon. “You better find him.”

 

 _“Is he in trouble?”_ Dick asked, voice growing smaller. _“What’s going on? Where’s the boss?”_

 

Tim looked back at Bruce. He looked like he had just been stabbed through the heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys, I have to level with you here. I've JUST started my first semester of final year at university and by the looks of it the workload is going to be much bigger than I had first thought especially with the project I've decided to take on. This means from here on out for the next fourteen weeks updates will be few and far between. I'm so sorry about this but thanks so much for all those amazing comments last chapter (seriously, wow) and I will try to keep these coming out though I can't make any promises and they will most certainly be at a slower pace.
> 
> I'm so sorry about this. I have completely miscalculated my workloads here and I really want to give my schooling it all just like I want to give you guys the best story I can write.
> 
> Otherwise, I really hope you enjoyed this chapter, I love you all, and stay keen for the next one... even if it's likely a while away.


	7. Chapter 7

_Sorry Father._

 

Two words. That was all the explanation his son saw fit to leave him, written in the boy’s tidy hand and left on his pillow. Two words that brought bile into Bruce’s mouth and left him shaking with a sickening mix of gut churning anger, hopeless confusion, and a wretched persistent love. Because he couldn’t believe Damian was responsible for this. He couldn’t. There had to be some reasonable explanation for his disappearance, for this note, and for Talia’s knowledge about Clark. Something that explained the last numbing hours but didn’t condemn the spikey little creature that tumbled into the pack the year before, that hugged him when no one was around to see, and somehow managed to form a threadbare family bond between them. His son. Damian.

 

_Sorry Father._

 

The boy who had always hated Clark, who was raised by Talia to kill those that came in his way, and who disappeared into the night leaving nothing but two words in confession.

 

_Sorry Father._

 

Bruce screwed up the scrap of paper in his hand and let it drop listlessly onto the floor at his feet. He couldn’t condemn but, just then, he couldn’t forgive either. He couldn’t do anything but sit on the edge of the bed against a cold deadening exhaustion, try to find some tendril of sense among the tangle of festering feelings inside him, and stare sightlessly forward as the midday sun spilt grey and gritty through the bedroom windows. Damian had been missing for just under thirteen hours. Clark had been missing for just over nineteen.

 

The police were looking, the Justice League were looking, and Dick would still be out looking if Jason hadn’t forcibly driven him back into the cave for a mandatory meal and a minimum of six hours sleep. Bruce would still be downstairs if Alfred hadn’t done much the same thing to him.

 

But he couldn’t sleep. Not with that note on his pillow, not missing his blue eyed alien heater warming his bed, and not with his son missing.

 

Bruce lurched off the bed with a broken curse, paced the room twice, and yanked open the cupboard to bury his nose in one of Clark’s shirts dug out of the washing basket. The scent was fading but it was still there. Warm, airy, and wholesome like oats coloured with an almost hidden streak of exotic alien sharpness. He abandoned the shirt and found another. This one had a sharper scent, a spicier one. Clark had been aroused when he took this shirt off. Bruce remembered him taking this shirt off. Bruce had been aroused too. He sighed and dropped the clothing back into the basket.

 

The alpha had lain out a suit – bulky and ugly as always – with a couple of bags no doubt filled with everything he needed to report on a story he had been working on. Maybe it was the fracking story, or something on Batman Inc. Bruce pulled open the nearest bag and looked inside. Clark’s work laptop, a couple of interview mics, and a camera.

 

He looked at that camera. It was nice enough that the zoom lens on it was a travesty, small enough not to be unwieldy, and had a shotgun mic and pocket LED fixed above the barrel. A reporter’s weapon.

 

_I never did get you a Christmas present._

 

It was stupid, not the time, and a waste of energy when he didn’t have enough… but it was also something to do, something that meant he believed Clark was coming back soon. Because he _had_ to believe that.

 

Bruce grabbed the camera, checked the memory cards, and finding no tripod landed it on the bedside table before turning it on.

 

The girl wriggled awake and elbowed him as he shed his clothes and climbed onto the bed.

 

He ignored her. He was too tired, too worried, and too alone to work his voice into the low comforting tones he used to speak to her. God, he hated this. Being alone. Being useless. Being abandoned and betrayed. This time yesterday everything had been… good. Not perfect. Leviathan was coiling around the world, his company was fighting the formal establishment of Batman Inc., and his back had hurt. But he’d had Clark, he’d had Damian, and he’d been secretly instinctually prepping and setting up the environment for his baby.

 

It seemed so far away now. The peace, the safety, of yesterday.

 

But he pretended he was back there, pretended everything was okay, and smiled at the camera.

 

“Hello Clark. Merry Christmas.”

 

A pause.

 

He wasn’t sure how to begin this. Wasn’t sure if he should masturbate like he did when no one was watching – hard, fast, and businesslike – or try and perform for his absent mate. He didn’t know if he should talk or jump straight into it. He didn’t even know what about the pregnancy apparently turned Clark on. Was it just his belly? Or should he show off other parts of himself that had changed? His arse? His nipples? Should he lie on his back, legs up, or on all fours? Should he act like he’s getting fucked or just give himself pleasure? Should he look at the camera or ignore it?

 

“Fuck,” he muttered and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry, Clark, I just… I’m really distracted right now.” A long pause. “You see, you said you would be home soon and now Damian’s missing and Talia… I don’t know where he is. I know she has you because if she doesn’t have you that means she…” he trailed off. Refused to finish that thought. “I know she has you. I’ll find her. I’ll find you. I’ll find Damian.” He straightened, grimly resolving to cut whatever this was out of the final footage. “You’re going to come home. I know that. That is why I’m making this. Because I know you’re coming home.” He settled, recomposed his face into a smile, and started again. “Merry Christmas, Clark.”

 

He reached down, around the uneven bulge of his pregnancy, and touched his limp cock. It was hard giving himself attention around the shape of his body but he managed it and even somehow worked his way up to a semi erection. It was the closest he could get. It didn’t matter. He was an omega and his penis wasn’t his only, or even his key, sexual pleasure centre.

 

Bruce extended his hand around and traced the rim of his puckered entrance. He was dry, unresponsive, and it hurt when he pushed in. It felt strange trying to stimulate himself, to force himself into arousal, especially since in the last few years his body had become almost overly eager for his mate’s touch. They were bond mates now and the scent of the other man, the feel of him, and the taste of him was more than enough to fast-track him into wanton readiness.

 

Not then.

 

He gave up and slumped back on the bed. “Fuck Clark…” Let what little arousal he’d been able to wrangle together slip away. “Fuck…”

 

It was a stupid idea and the results were predictable. Still he felt defeated and weak as he crawled across the bed towards the camera, ponderously deleted the video, and turned it off.

 

“I’ll make it when you get back…” he whispered and lay on his side. “You can be in it too.” He thought of that. “It’ll be better, don’t you think? With both of us.”

 

The silence that followed that statement was crushing.

 

A soft knock at the door. “Bruce? Are you awake?”

 

“Tim,” he answered wearily, struggling off the bed and picked up his track pants. He didn’t bother trying to hide his scent. He hadn’t been close to aroused enough for it to be detectable on his skin. “You can come in,” he said once he was dressed.

 

The omega entered, hair sticking up at almost every angle, and too small pyjamas rumbled. “I can’t sleep,” he whispered.

 

“I thought you were at school,” Bruce admitted.

 

He shook his head. “Alfred told me to stay home.”

 

Bruce sighed and nodded. “That was wise of him.”

 

“Actually,” Tim blushed and shut the door. “I, eh, also think I might be going into heat.”

 

Bruce studied him. “No you’re not. Your next heat is over a month away and you smell fine.”

 

Tim looked at him, hugged his sides, and walked towards the bed. “I know but… I’ve been wanting to be in my room and I started moving stuff around. Maybe I’m going to have an out of sync heat. That happens right? Especially if there are sudden hormonal changes.”

 

“What hormonal changes?”

 

Tim’s cheeks prickled. “Like… nothing much, really. But it can happen, right?”

 

“It’s incredibly rare,” Bruce told him. “Ovaries aren’t testicles. They’re not in the habit of working overtime.”

 

“But…”

 

“And if you were _for some reason_ on hormonal medication,” he went on pointedly, “your heat might come a couple of days early, or late, in _rare_ cases but not a month. Don’t worry.”

 

“But I was _nesting_ ,” he whispered feverishly. “I am right now. I want to get back to my nest.”

 

“In times of stress omegas sometimes instinctually retreat to their nests,” he told him. “No one would blame you for feeling stressed right now Tim.”

 

The other omega stared at him hopelessly. “You’re not. Going to your nest, I mean.”

 

His nest was a room in the back of the batcave. “No,” he agreed. “I’m not.” Though he had in the past. As much as he would like to pretend he was above instinct there was a lot of his omega nature he’d never been able to suppress. The need for a nest – a safe place to spend a heat – was one. But it wasn’t a safe place he was lacking. It was the man he wanted to put in it he was missing.

 

Tim looked away. “I-I’m sorry.”

 

Bruce quickly smothered whatever expression was showing on his face. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he rasped.

 

“Yes I do,” the boy said. “I didn’t believe you.”

 

“No,” Bruce stopped him. Sat down on the bed. A graceless, exhausted, drop. “The reason why I work with you is because you think differently than me. You think and you challenge me. I need that.”

 

“But you were right,” the boy protested weakly. “It was Leviathan.”

 

“And if I was wrong I would have been wasting time digging in the wrong spot,” Bruce told him. “You were right. The poetry meant nothing. The moment I looked away from it I saw the cities.”

 

Tim hugged his sides. “But I didn’t. I was looking at the same piece of paper for almost half an hour. I never saw it.”

 

“You would have seen it if it was a number code,” Bruce told him, confident. “Or if you knew the word beloved was relevant.”

 

Tim didn’t look convinced. “What if I am going into heat?” He changed the subject. “I mean… what if I really am?”

 

“You’re not,” Bruce said confidently. “I would smell it on you if you were.”

 

“But…” Tim sat down beside him. “What if I am?” Voice tiny.

 

“Then we’ll take care of you,” he muttered.

 

“But…” the boy shifted on the corner of the bed. “What if Kon smells me?”

 

“He won’t touch you,” Bruce muttered. “He’s proved that already. He knows you’re off limits in heat.” He looked over at Tim. “He just hasn’t learnt you’re off limits at other times yet.”

 

The boy’s cheeks were a hot pink. Bruce wasn’t so naive not to know the two were sexually active, and could guess what this ‘hormonal changes’ might be. Despite his vocal disapproval of the relationship it was almost a relief having some evidence that the boy was using medical birth control. Condoms were all well and good – and a disturbingly large part of the young alpha’s budget – but they could break especially when going against a horney young half Kryptonian.

 

“I know I’m being stupid,” Tim whispered. “But could you sleep in my room? You can have the bed.”

 

Bruce looked at him, shocked. “Why?”

 

“I-I really don’t want to be outside it. But I really don’t want to be alone right now either.” He shrugged. “Stupid, right? But, I guess, I… with Clark and then Damian…”

 

“Why not Dick or Jason?” Bruce muttered, voice hoarse.

 

“They’re…” The colour in Tim’s cheeks deepened.

 

“Why not Alfred?” He moved on quickly.

 

“He’s awake. I…” Tim stood. “Sorry, this is stupid.”

 

“No,” Bruce forced himself upright. “No, it’s okay.” A deep breath. “Come on.”

 

He’d never developed a paternal bond with Tim. Once a child presented it was near impossible to form that kind of bond and the boy had become an omega within months of entering the household. He couldn’t pretend that is wasn’t his fault as well. He had never been good with showing affection and for a long time had spurned the classic caregiving role believing it was indicative of omegahood and thus a weakness to be beaten down and smothered. Part of him still struggled with it. But he wasn’t sleeping and he would lose nothing giving comfort to Tim.

 

They padded across the landing, Tim leading the way, and ducked into the other omega’s room without running into anyone. Bruce was thankful. He hadn’t put on a shirt and while his pack was used to seeing each other in varies states of dress he didn’t want to have to face Martha or even Conner half naked.

 

“I…” Tim looked at him, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

 

“Get in bed, Tim.”

 

“But, don’t’ you?”

 

“It’s your bed,” he reminded him.

 

“But…”

 

“Tim.” He growled. The sound slipping out of him before he could withhold it. Aggressive, angry. A command.

 

The boy shuffled reluctantly towards the bed and slipped under the covers like a fox into long grass. Bruce slumped into one of the armchairs and gazed at the wriggling pile of blankets. If Tim was nesting he was the most literally nester Bruce had ever seen. Each sheet twisted, bundled, and wrapped around him until he’d created a mound in the middle of the bed. From the top a face appeared, grey blue eyes blinking at his suspiciously.

 

“Will you stay?”

 

“Yes,” Bruce sighed.

 

The boy sunk into his blankets. “It’s going to be okay, Bruce.”

 

He stared at the floor. “Go to sleep, Tim.”

 

The young omega settled with a rustle of blankets. “It is,” he promised in a whisper. “It always is.”

 

Bruce didn’t answer him. Tim had never lived Jason’s death, nor been here when he’d had his back broken, or even really understood just how close things had come with Doomsday the year before. Tim always worried, his mind leaping to the worst possible conclusions first, but he’d never had to face those fears substantiated. Bruce had.

 

He knew some things didn’t end okay. Some things ended so wrong nothing was never quite okay again afterwards.

 

_You’re coming back, Clark. And you’re going to bring Damian back with you. And we’re going to make a porno together._

 

He clutched to that belief as Tim’s breathing slowly changed; turning slow and deep as he finally slept. Bruce must have slept too. A kind of sleep that swooped from nowhere and carried him numbly away. He didn’t realise he was sleeping. Not at first. Not until he looked around and saw a twisted dreamscape unfurling before him. Vivid and senseless.

 

Talia was there but her face was wrong. Everything muddled and out of place like an abstract painting. Mouth on her brow, eyes on the tips of her cheek bones, and nose sideways. She was in the process of gently changing Damian’s features around until he was as senseless as she was; mouth sideways and in the place of the left eye, both eyes knocked over to one side, and nose slipping down the chin like water. The boy blinked at him with his newly deformed face and then took his mother’s hand.

 

_Sorry Father._

 

It was just a dream but he felt the betrayal afresh. A sharp yank at his heart. _Damian…_

 

Bruce turned away, rejected the image, and came face to face with another. Dick and Jason kissed, bodies pressed together on a gaudy wedding alter. It was a messy kiss, open, and explicitly sexual. Hands clawing at their crouches and tongues in each other’s mouths. Sickening. Sickening because they were ten and fifteen again wearing a matching set of bright coloured Robin costumes. Bruce stepped forward to try and break them apart, just like he used to when they were fighting. In a blink their positions were reversed. Dick was ten and Jason fifteen. Bruce stopped. _But when Jason was fifteen he…_ the boy turned to him with a bloody face, his uniform ruined, and vanished.

 

“No!”

 

_Sorry Father._

 

Ten year old Dick sat down alone, hugged his knees, and suddenly he wasn’t Dick but him. A tiny boy sitting in a pearl spotted alleyway between two still bleeding bodies. Joe Chill was running away but that didn’t matter. Not to the terrified child trying to wake the corpse beside him. Trying to wake his father while reeking of a prepubescent surge of omega pheromones.

 

_Sorry Father._

 

Bruce turned away from the scene, from the memory, and strode into the darkness past a million taunting shadows. Flickers of faces he could almost recognise, could almost remember, but didn’t linger long enough to see. Then he saw Tim. He tried to ignore him, tried to keep moving though this strange twisted dream, but he couldn’t. The boy was badly bruised, had a brutal bite mark on his neck, and was pregnant. The image of omega oppression. He was also showing Bruce a wedding ring and smiling – the action revealing missing teeth – as if that made everything okay. Bruce tried to pull him away but the young omega snatched his hand back, frowned, and slipped away into the darkness.

 

_Sorry Father._

 

“Clark!” He called. That had to be the point of this dream. That had to be who he would see next. “Clark! Where the hell are you?!” Nothing. “Clark! Where did she take you?! Wh—”

 

A tug at his hand.

 

He turned. Froze.

 

A little girl stood beside him, hair a mess of dark curls, and free hand toying with the hem of a simple blue dress. She looked like photos he had seen of his mother as a girl but she had Clark’s eyes. Those eerie alien eyes.

 

Horror rocked through him. “No!” He scooped her up and clutched her to his chest. Whatever this sick dream was he wouldn’t let it do anything to her. “It’s okay, pup. Just stay with me. It’s okay. We’re going to find your other daddy.”

 

She wriggled in his embrace.

 

“No, don’t go. We’re going to…” she kicked his side. It felt like a stab wound. Sharp, hot, wrong.

 

Bruce dropped her with a gasp and stared as she turned to him. Her face was like Damian’s; a mess, tears streaking up into her hair in defiance of gravity, and mouth where her nose should be.

 

“Pup… _Ah_.”

 

She vanished, just like Jason had.

 

_Sorry Father._

 

Another jarring flare of pain and he opened his eyes. He was in Tim’s room again, the sun was still high in the sky, and the slow sound of the boy’s breathing trickled out from under the nest of blankets. He could feel the girl kicking against his ribs in a furious foxtrot just as a new flare of pain ran up his sides.

 

No… _No!_

 

Not now. This wasn’t right. Clark wasn’t here. He was only thirty four weeks. This was wrong. All wrong.

 

“Tim.”

 

Nothing.

 

“Tim!”

 

The bundle of blankets twitched and a face groggily emerged. “H-huh?”

 

“Get Alfred.”

 

He frowned. “Why?”

 

His sides tightened, the pain worsening. “I…I think I’m in labour.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm giving really mixed signals right now. I promise I am busy and chapters are going to be more erratic and probably a lot slower but I didn't write for two days and almost pulled my hair out so... I wrote two chapters on Sunday. It was like an explosion. I couldn't help it. I seriously think I have a bona fide writing addiction here. It is not okay.
> 
> So here's the first of those chapters and I guess I'll post the other in a couple of hours. I hope you like it even if it's a bit rough around the edges.
> 
> But, I will say, this was a moment of weakness on my part and I will be dedicating more time to my schooling especially when things really start happening. Thanks for reading and for putting up with my unreliability in this department.


	8. Chapter 8

It was harder than expected to evade Grayson. The man almost caught him several times as Damian made his mad dash across Gotham. He tailed him on black pronged wings all the way to the Diamond District before Damian abandoned his Robin costume and broke into a department store to switch to civilian clothes. Even then didn’t feel safe until he jumped the gate into Gotham Underground, finally escaping Batman’s reach. The train rattled on the tracks, junkies slept ignored on the platform, and nobody stopped him from clambering over the gates a second time and striding out into the dockyards. It was passed midnight, the air smelt like piss and fish, and two alphas were fighting in a nearby alley.

 

But, more importantly, there was the ship. Just where he knew she would be.

 

The _Mariana Duo_ was an unimpressive vessel. Tattered nets swung from a stubby fishing frame, one of the lifeboats had an obvious hole in its hull, and the snoozing guard didn’t even bother to chase off the early morning seagulls tucking into a meagre day’s catch. But, Damian knew, under this exterior the _Mariana_ was more dangerous that she seemed. She was the prize of his mother’s fleet – a sleek metal war machine under a false wooden deck. Like an assassin’s sword, hidden but deadly.

 

Damian fingered his own sword as he strode up to the hulking guard and saw his eyes glint in the darkness. Not so asleep after all. Awake and glaring at him as if his rank gave him the authority to do so. “ _Tt_.” He sounded his displeasure. “Move aside.”

 

No answer. The man towered over him, shoulders as broad as father’s, and scent putridly ordinary.

 

Damian bristled. “Are you simple, man? I said move aside.”

 

In Arabic. _“Fuck off.”_ The voice was strange, distorted. For the first time Damian noticed the man was wearing some kind of mask on the bottom half of his face; the metal near lost in the dark.

 

His eyes narrowed. _“I am of the house al Ghul, servant.”_ He fluidly matched the language. _“I will speak with my mother, your leader. Now move aside.”_

 

 The man tilted his head to the side, and regarded him with sudden ugly interest. _“Al Ghul?”_

His fists clenched. _“Yes. The family who you owe your life, no doubt. The family you are standing here in service here for. I can’t imagine you would have forgotten but perhaps I am mistaken.”_

The man’s face was nothing but the mask as the eyes. Two sparks of black light. _“There are enemies in the house al Ghul. We are beyond th—”_

 

 _“Hail Leviathan, then,”_ he spat. _“Now, I will not be delayed any long—”_

 

The guard attacked him. It was a smooth elegant strike made with a box cutter he produced from his pocket. How droll.

 

Damian lurched back, nimbly avoided the blow, and produced his sword from under his clothes. It was long, curved with lethal elegance, and balanced easily in his hands. He smiled. In English. “Mine’s bigger than yours.”

 

The man looked at him.

 

Damian realised what he said. _Damn it, he was turning into Grayson._ With a yell he threw himself forward, swung his sword towards the man’s shoulder, and cut into flesh as the man deflected with his forearm. The box cutter was still clasped dangerously in his fist, the blade as exposed as it could get, and jabbing towards him.

 

Hissed. _“You know nothing of Leviathan, whelp!_

 

“Hah!” Damian slammed the butt of his sword into the box cutter, snapping off the fragile blade. _“I know Leviathan needs better weapons, servant. Now let me pass!”_

 

The stranger’s eyes shone. _“It does not, brother. I am the greatest weapon of all.”_

 

He froze and frowned. _“Brother?”_

 

A chilling bark of laughter followed by a punch. It was the man’s bloody arm but he didn’t flinch as he struck him in the middle of the chest. Damian flew back. The impact was enough to make his ribcage flare white hot in pain and wrench his sword from his hand. He landed on the deck, head spinning, and stared at the approaching figure. Again, his scent struck Damian; frighteningly ordinary, sickeningly familiar, and oddly childlike. He didn’t have a caste. He didn’t even have the defining aroma of a child Damian’s age. He smelt like a baby.

 

 _“You,”_ Damian realised. _“Brother.”_

 

His twin, put on ice when they were both foetuses, and grown in the belly of a whale when his mother decided Damian had failed to live up to the standard of his family. Only the Devil knew what his mother had put into him to make him grow into adulthood so fast, or why he had superhuman strength, but they were identical by blood.

 

 _“Has mother seen fit to give you a name yet?”_ Damian rasped; a bitter jab.

 

The man paused. Finally out in the middle of the deck Damian could see him better. He wore a fisherman’s jacket over swirling tattered white robe cut off at the knee. The metal mask only covered the bottom half of his face but a hood cast the rest into shadow but for a thin streak of moonlight around his eyes. Eyes like his father but young… very young. His face at least betraying something of his true age. _“I’m still hers.”_ His brother retaliated. _“She threw you away.”_

 

 _“So, I’m to gather that’s a no.”_ Damian hissed. _“Hah. You are not my brother. You are a tool.”_

 

_“I am our mother’s chosen!”_

 

 _“I was too. Now I am our father’s chosen_.” He tried to put conviction into those words. Try to make what he experienced in his father’s pack translate across into his mother’s world of ranks and rules. _“I am our father’s blood heir. What are you?”_

 

His brother’s breath rattled in an ugly snigger through is mask. _“I am fatherless.”_

 

 _“Then you are a heretic,”_ Damian snarled.

 

Another angry laugh, the man approached a step. _“I am not the only one, brother. You think your precious bitch father will keep you after tonight? You who killed his mate.”_

 

Damian’s stomach lurched. _“I didn’t kill him.”_

 

 _“The blood isn’t on your sword but it is on your hands, brother.”_ Another step. _“You told mother all she needed to know to end the alien’s life.”_

 

 _“And what did you do?”_ Damian rasped. _“Did you kill him?”_ The question lifted desperately from his mouth. A bid to find out what had happened, and what he could possibly do to reverse it. Because Clark wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. He was Superman.

 

 _“No.”_ His brother – the heretic – responded. _“I did not.”_

 

Damian was shaking, his hands fists at his sides, and bottom lip held between his teeth. “I tire of this,” he rasped, abandoning Arabic for the language that had against all instincts started to feel most natural on his tongue. “Let me speak to mother.”

 

His brother’s English was heavily accented and childish. “Mother doesn’t want to talk.”

 

“Then she shouldn’t have listened when I told her of father’s mate,” he cried. “Let me speak to her!”

 

“No.”

 

“Of all the things I sent her,” Damian heard himself go on, vocal cords working without his permission. “Of all those useless letters, _this_ was the one she read. _This_ was the one she saw fit to answer.” He felt a traitorous sting of tears behind his eyes. Furiously blinked them away.

 

 _“You wanted the alien gone.”_ His brother accused, slipping back into Arabic. _“Now you cry.”_

 

“I am angry!” Damian continued in English. “I sent that letter over eight months ago.” He had still been new to the pack, his father had just announced his pregnancy, and not even Drake was talking to him. So he’d sent a letter to the same address he had all the others thinking, like the others, this letter too would come to nothing. It had been the last one he ever sent his mother. A bitter messy tirade intended to wound her.

 

He remembered it in vivid detail.

 

_Mother,_

_Your precious ‘mate’ has chosen another. One who he willingly shares blood with. That’s right, mother, he breeds with him. He prefers a mid level male alien over you. I am not surprised. If you were any kind of true alpha you would kill the invader. If you were any kind of true mate you wouldn’t have let this happen. If you were any kind of true mother we would all be together now._

 

_But you are not._

 

He had signed it Damian Wayne. It was the first time he’d seriously used his father’s name.

“It was eight months ago,” Damian said again. “Eight months!”

 

 _“It takes a long time to kill an alien,”_ his brother told him, picked up his sword. _“It will not take long to kill you.”_

 

Damien’s lip curled. “You can’t kill me.”

 

His brother – the heretic – laughed again as he lifted Damian’s sword, towering over him. An ugly metallic sound that rasped and crackled through his mask.

 

“Enough!”

 

Heretic flinched and spun around. Damian didn’t move. _I knew you would speak to me, mother._ The woman that stepped onto the deck wasn’t the mother he remembered. Her face was the same sharp angular exhibition of fierceness, her dress a familiar high necked form fitting green gown, and even her flanking guards the same two lumbering Man-Bats. She’d always looked cruel, always looked beautiful, and always bore a scent strong enough to throttle; high level alpha, higher than even Todd and grandfather. But she was different somehow. Her eyes alight with an almost mad and barely concealed glee.

 

“Mother…” Damian muttered.

 

 _“Mother,”_ his brother began. _“I was d—”_

 

“You do not call me mother,” the woman snapped, her use of English somehow insulting. “You were born of the carcass of a whale. That is your mother.”

 

His twin twitched unhappy and looked at him. “But…”

 

“Where is the rest of your mask?” The woman said, eyeing him up and down. “You know I can’t stand to look at you.”

 

Damian glanced up at his brother and saw again his father’s eyes set into an unnervingly young looking brow. He looked like he still had a boy’s face transplanted onto an adult body. _His_ face, Damian realised with a lurch. It had to be. They were, after all, identical. They had to be. They split from the same embryo.

 

“I will get it, m—Lady Talia,” Damian’s twin said and left, each step smooth but also oddly unbalanced. Wrong.

 

“He is my replacement,” Damian said. “He is a brute.”

 

“He is a greater asset than you could ever be, Damian,” Talia told him bluntly. “You were always too much your father’s. He is…”

 

“Fatherless,” Damian finished for her. “Yes. I got that.”

 

Her eyes narrowed. “You have changed.”

 

“I’m going to be eleven in a month,” he said it as if it made any difference.

 

“Huh,” she seemed irritated by the useless information. “You wished to speak to me. I have no doubt it is about the alien.”

 

He bit the inside of his cheek and nodded.

 

“Good.” She turned. “Come, below decks. It is too open up here.”

 

He nodded, picked up his sword that his brother had abandoned on a barrel, and followed her down onto the belly of the ship. Soon the crummy wood work and reek of the docks fell away to be replaced by _Mariana’s_ sleek metal infrastructure and cages filled with hordes of shrieking Man-Bats. His lip curled as he realised they had been divided according to their castes; not keeping different castes apart but stragicially mingling them together. One cage had the high level omegas put in with the high level alphas, all the mid level betas were crushed into another, and the low level alphas were sectioned off by themselves. According to the ideals of the house of al Ghul only the high levels should be allowed to continue their bloodlines. It was believed anything less would result in poorer offspring. Anything not born of an omega, sired by an alpha, was abomination. The secret as to the reversed roles of his parents was well kept among the house of al Ghul.

 

“You’re breeding them,” Damian commented and he watched one of the high level Man-Bats mount another.

 

“It is an experiment,” his mother told him. “It would be less wasteful if they could repopulate themselves.”

 

He remembered the documentary he had watched with Todd, Drake, and the younger Kent. “Would the male omegas not breed among themselves?”

 

She snorted in disgust. “What sick things has your father been teaching you? No. I do not allow it. All omegas, male or otherwise, unfit in rank to further their bloodlines are killed to avoid such a travesty. I am no fool. They are little better than animals and even a high level alpha might rut a low level omega if they get the chance.”

 

Some part of him wrestled uncomfortably with the idea. “You’re killing all but the high level omegas.” He thought of Drake. “I thought the whole point was a bigger army.”

 

“While not lessening the army with improper breeding,” the woman added.

 

“What about the female alphas?” He countered quickly. “They can bear. Are they killed too?”

 

“I am not discussing this,” she said and ushered him past the cages and into a sleek metal walled chamber. It was a sitting room, windowless, with one wall covered in ancient objects. He saw a sword that glowed red along the blade, a crown made out of carved finger bones, and an amulet that throbbed with magical energy from across the room. He also saw Clark.

 

Damian stared.

 

The alpha was on a table at the far end of the room, eyes closed, and body smattered in a confusing amount of blood. He looked very pale, his costume was a blue red tatter, and his chest wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.

 

He was dead.

 

“You…” he rasped, approached. No… no this wasn’t right… he was meant to come here and save him… he caused this… he was meant to fix it.

 

“You were right,” Talia said. “I could not allow something like this touch my mate.”

 

“He’s n-not your mate,” he stuttered.

 

She arched an eyebrow. “Your existence begs to differ, Damian. No, he may not bear my mark but your father is mine. I will remind him of that fact, and kill the bastard offspring. If anything, though, this is good news. He can still bear children. An ability I am glad he has not yet lost.”

 

“He’s not yours,” Damian croaked. He was shaking again, violently this time.

 

“He was given to me,” his mother told him. “The silly creature didn’t know it at the time but he was a gift, from my father, that I accepted.” She poured herself a drink. “And what a gift. An omega that had a whole city cowering to him. If he had been a woman no doubt my father would have taken him for himself but the rules of our house are strict.” She sipped. “Can you imagine? An omega like that with the blood of al Ghul? Our children will be kings.”

 

Damian stared at her. “ _I_ am your child.”

 

She sucked her teeth. “Yes. And you, Damian, I foolishly thought would be a king for a time. Your brother too, when you failed. Unfortunately the imperfect way you both were conceived means you will forever be lacking. But, with as strong as your brother is, one can only imagine what a proper child of ours would be like. A true heir. One to rule the world.”

 

Damian turned away from her and looked at Kent’s body. He couldn’t see a wound. Just blood. Sickening amount of it. He reached out to touch the man’s hand. He wasn’t cold. Not really. Colder than Clark usually was but not cold by human standards. Heart pounding in his ears he checked for a pulse.

 

“Do you doubt my work, Damian?”

 

Nothing. He couldn’t feel anything. “I…” he swallowed the lump in his throat. “I can’t see a wound.”

 

“No,” she frowned. “Peculiar creature healed once the magic wore off. It must be a reflex of the alien body that lingered post-mortem. Its flesh is once more indestructible but it has no heartbeat and has stopped scenting. It is dead.” She said the words with a dry satisfaction. “It put up a good fight. It may have even escaped if it weren’t so reluctant to kill. No matter. You were right to tell me of this, Damian. Now I just need to find a suitably flamboyant way for Leviathan to celebrate this success. Some way to show off the body. Oh, beloved, this game of masks and mystery we play.”

 

She was right, Damian realised. Clark had stopped scenting. A bit of the alpha allure still clung to his clothing but under the reek of aging blood the body itself was like dirt. Meaningless, odourless, empty. Gone.

 

He couldn’t hide the shaking anymore. This was his fault and he couldn’t fix it. He couldn’t rescue Kent and bring him back to the pack like he’d planned. He couldn’t apologise after everything was back the way it was meant to be. He couldn’t make up for what he’d done. Not for this. Not ever.

 

The tears were burning in his eyes now. His mother was still talking. He ignored her.

 

He had finally started to feel like a part of the pack these last five months; his father was treating him like a son, Grayson had become an odd kind of ally, and even Drake was tolerable. Now he’d ruined it because he was too stupid to see it when he first arrived, and because he hadn’t ever tried to get to know the man on the table before him. Grayson talked to Clark for hours sometimes, Drake played a variety of simple board games with him, and he’d even seen Todd wrestle with him… once. Clark had always been carefully kind with him though. He got books off the shelf top for him. He complimented him on his drawings. He found his cricket ball. He kept trying to convince Bruce to get him a dog. He let Damian have the last chicken wing two nights ago. He… was gone.

 

And Damian didn’t have a pack anymore.

 

He had nowhere else to go but… “May I kill my brother for you mother?”

 

She clucked her tongue. “He will kill you, Damian.”

 

It didn’t matter. Either he did, in which case it was over. Or he didn’t, in which case Damian had some form of family. Even if it was a side of the family he didn’t love. It was weak, pathetic, but he needed someone. He couldn’t be alone. “No he won’t. I’ll kill him. I’ll prove I’m better. I’ll prove I’m your heir.”  


“You were born imperfect, Damian. You will never be my heir.”

 

“I will be your blade then,” he concluded quickly. “Your weapon. Like him. But better. I’ll kill him to prove it. He’s born of a beast. I’m al Ghul.”

 

Her look was cold. “I thought you were going by ‘Wayne’ now.”

 

He stared hopelessly up at her.

 

She sipped her drink and snorted. “You always did have too much of your father in you. But never in the right places.” She closed her eyes. “Run back to his nest, Damian. You aren’t strong enough for Leviathan.”

 

“I am! Why won’t you let me prove it?!”

 

“You weep over the corpse of the thing you wished dead, Damian. You are weak.”

 

“This is because of my caste, isn’t it?” Damian rasped. “I know you now my caste. I know you got me tested. I’m a low level, aren’t I? A low level omega you would kill or a low level alpha that gets locked off to the side or a low level beta that’s confused and disorientated.” His cheeks were read. “That’s why you got rid of me. And that’s why you hate my brother too. We’re identical. He’s got the same caste as me.”

 

She looked at him. Cold. “You’re right. He does.”

 

A gut churning lurch. He was right. She knew his caste. It was why she left him. Abandoned him to his father and the man’s imperfect piebald pack. A pack where high level alphas fell in love with low levels, an omega lead, and an alien was his stepdad.

 

“What am I?” He whispered. “Omega? Alpha? Beta?” He didn’t bother asking the levels, he knew he couldn’t be high. He couldn’t even be mid. He couldn’t be something worth even tolerating if she would abandon him and completely and remorselessly objectify his brother; turn him into nothing more than a weapon.

 

She took one more sip of her drink. “You want to know your caste?”

 

He didn’t look away from Clark. “Yes.” He wanted to know what was so terrible she would give him up over. That she dehumanised his brother over.

 

She tasted her drink. “What if,” she began slowly, “I tell you you’re an omega?”

 

He shook. “I’m an omega?”

 

She didn’t answer.

 

He digested this information slowly. An omega. A low level omega. Like the Man-Bats she killed. Like Drake. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. A low level omega was seen as next to useless under al Ghul law. Unsavoury breeding material yet hampered with heats and distracting to the alphas. No wonder she had got rid of him.

 

“If we’re low level omegas,” he whispered. “It makes no sense stopping us from fighting. One of us, maybe both of us, will die and you will be spared shame. The victor has proven the right to be considered above their caste.”

 

She put her glass down, empty. “You know you will die.”

 

“Unless I win.”

 

“You brother kills super humans.”

 

“So do I,” he whispered, eyes on Clark.

 

The woman’s lips pinched, eyes bleak and barren for a moment. “Very well,” she muttered. “Perhaps it is time we all put our weaknesses behind us.” She gripped the edge of the desk. “I will let you both fight and whoever rises as the victor shall be the tooth of my Leviathan.” She straightened. “I will give you each four days to prepare. Bring into the arena what you will.” She moved towards the door.

 

“Thank you, mother,” he muttered.

 

She paused. “You must call me Lady Talia.” There was a note of strain in her voice.

 

“Thank you, Lady Talia,” he said numbly.

 

She flinched. “Damian I…”

 

He waited.

 

“You may pick a suitable bed from this deck.”

 

Again. Numb. “Thank you, Lady Talia.”

 

He left in a flurry of skirts, slamming the door behind her.

 

Damian stayed in the bleak room with the body of his father’s mate. It could have been minutes or hours later when he carefully set his sword down, kicked off his shoes, and climbed onto the table with Clark. He curled up against the scentless alpha’s side, awkwardly hugged the man’s cape around both their bodies, and cried himself to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronologically this chapter takes place before the others.


	9. Chapter 9

Jason was a stress fucker.

 

If things got hard, if something didn’t go down well, or if he just had a bad day Jason would come home, either bend him over or push him down onto his knees, and fuck him. No dialogue, just a raw hard fuck. Dick had learnt to show nothing but love and comfort during those encounters. The alpha was working stress out of his system in a way that didn’t involve knives, bullets, or blood. How could Dick deny him that? How could he turn down a chance to hold and relieve the man he loved?

 

Afterward Jason would always kiss him, apologise despite Dick’s protests, and with some prompting would usually talk about what had upset him. Most of the time it was work gone wrong. A dead hostage, an escaped criminal, or just police showing up at the wrong time. Blonde female omegas getting hurt seemed to hit him particularly hard, something Dick hadn’t understood until he’d tracked down a picture of Jason’s mother. Recently young male omegas had started triggering him as well. Especially ones that looked like Tim. But, whatever it was that had tipped him over the edge that day, whatever had been a little too much, Dick tried to be there for him.

 

But now Jason was stress fucking… and for the first time he was stress fucking right back.

 

Limbs fell everywhere, mouths locked onto nearby flesh, and hips rutted mindlessly forward. Dick threw himself into the feeling of being pinned down by the other man, the agonising invasion of cock battering into him, and tried to forget about the last sickening hours of his life. Hours of failure, hours of separation; hours looking for two absentee members of his family.

 

“Shut up,” Jason rasped, and for the first time Dick realised he was talking out loud.

 

“No…” he rasped. “Fuck you. It’s my fault. I lost him. He’s my Robin and I lost his trail…” he thrust forward with a ragged grunt, feeling the dry – near painful – tug and slide of foreskin as he drove through the firm hold of the alpha’s hand. “And I didn’t find anything on Clark. He’s my friend and I…”

 

The man thrust into him, hard.

 

“Fuck, Jason I…” his whole body shuddered as another thrust clenched tight behind his penis. “I’m so fucking tired of fucking this up. I-I never wanted to be Batman. And I know Damian’s a little shit sometimes but he’s… fuck I love him. And Cl… _ah!_ ” He hunched forward and rutted into the man’s palm in earnest, face pressed into his shoulder. “I fucking hate this. I fucking hate…”

 

“I said shut up!”

 

“And I said no— _ahh!_ ” He lurched forward as he came, the orgasm shallow and strangled but still enough to make his feet tingle and body slump open around Jason. “Ah, fuck Jason I… fuck…” he clung to the man above him as Jason continued to thrust into him with a raw kind of urgency. “I just…” he croaked. “…I hate this stress. I just want to switch it off for an hour. I just want…”

 

“I just want you to do what I fucking say,” Jason growled, grabbed his hands, and pinned them above his head. “Shut up.”

 

For once, Dick obeyed. There was something in the way the man held him, in the way he fucked him, and the way he spoke that told him not to test him. Not just now. So he obeyed. It wasn’t a submission – he didn’t show his neck – but it was an allowance knowing this was what the other man needed just now. It was, Dick realised with a lurch, what he needed too. Just to let Jason take control, manipulate his body into the position he wanted, and fuck him. For a flicker of a moment he wasn’t Batman, he wasn’t even Dick Grayson, just Jason’s. It was a reprieve, a breath, from the horror of the last few hours. It was what he needed.

 

It was even, as he surrendered, keenly sharply pleasurable. A raw real tremor of need funnelling from a tingling full feeling among the tight dry discomfort.

 

He didn’t used to like getting fucked so much. With other alphas he preferred keeping things simple, usually oral, or even just dry humping. Roy was the only other alpha he had ever let inside him anally and even then it wasn’t their standard routine. Jason was learning, adapting, and was slowly but surely broadening their horizons. But stress fucking was always a return to basics and basic for Jason was taking him like an alpha takes an omega. And, just like he had taught Jason to love receiving oral, Jason had taught him to love receiving anal.

 

He broke his silence with a gasp which was quickly followed up by an involuntary whine of need.

 

These noises the alpha accepted greedily so Dick stopped trying to bottle them and gave himself over to the feeling - and to the idea - of what was happening to him.

 

His own come drying on his skin, his prostate crushed back into his body, and rim abused until it was a ring of fiery sensation. On top of that was the throbbing full feeling, the dull erotic pain every time the man drove his entire length into him, and the nervous tingling of anxiety as he tried to prep himself for what would come next. Because, unless he said ‘no knot’ in the next six seconds Jason was going to…

 

“Fuck!” Jason lurched forward as he came.

 

Dick shuddered as he felt the man drive into him one more time, felt the hot flood of semen inside him, and the agonising feel of his insides being clogged by the rapid swelling at the base of Jason’s cock. It hurt. It always did. But his body had gotten used to it and as he breathed he felt himself slowly adjusted to take it. Despite it he kept himself stiff as the other man slumped down – heavy, hot, and reeking of alpha – on top of him.

 

“Fuck…” the man husked. “Fuck I’m sorry.”

 

“Jay…” Dick rasped, voice pained. “Don’t…” He didn’t want to the man to apologise. He didn’t want to talk or move a lot right now either.

 

“I didn’t use enough lube,” the man muttered.

 

Dick blinked. Voice tight. “You used lube?”

 

Jason flinched. “I fucked up. I was hurting you.”

 

“No. Shut up. Just fucking shut up.” A deep shuddering breath.

 

Jason leant forward, careful not to shift his pelvis too much, and pushed a kiss onto his lips. It was their first kiss that day and Dick felt himself melt into it; sucked into the fierce taste of alpha flavoured saliva, into the dry shape of the man’s lip, and the drunken patterns they formed with their mouths.

 

“I love you,” Dick wasn’t sure which one of them spoke.

 

“I love you too,” or who responded.

 

It didn’t matter.

 

All that mattered was, despite everything, it was true. It was acknowledged. And even when their family was lost somewhere on the streets of Gotham, when they were coming apart at the seams, they were there for each other.

 

A loud thump at the door.

 

“J-Jay! Dick!”

 

Jason. “Go away, kid.”

 

Dick. “Now isn’t a good time, Timmy.”

 

“Alfred’s taking Bruce to hospital.”

 

Silence.

 

“The baby isn’t due yet,” Dick rasped.

 

Tim didn’t hear him through the door so Jason re-vocalized the question louder. “Why the fuck is he going to hospital?! It’s too early for the baby!”

 

Tim’s voice was thick with emotion. “I know.”

 

“Fuck, Jay,” Dick buried his face in the man’s shoulder. “Get off me.”

 

Softly. “I can’t.”

 

“Just think of your grandma or something.”

 

“You know it doesn’t work like that.”

 

Tim. “Guys?”

 

“Which hospital, Timmy?”

 

“Gotham General.” The boy answered.

 

“We’ll meet you guys there. Go with them.”

 

“O-okay. Kon and Ma are coming too.”

 

Again. “We’ll meet you there.”

 

Jason’s eyes were closed, clearly trying to envision something unsexy. Has far as Dick could tell it was making no difference. He wasn’t surprised. Jason was right. Knots didn’t work like that. They were an involuntary reflex and, once formed especially within a body that gave them heat and pressure, they weren’t consciously retracted. While being unaroused _could_ speed up the shrinking of a knot it depended on the alpha. Some alphas could not-knot when they ejaculated, some could consciously reduce the time they carried a knot, and some claimed to be able to half-knot and withdraw. But, if that was true, Jason wasn’t one of them. If he ejaculated he knotted and if he knotted he stayed knotted for at least half an hour.

 

Jason opened his eyes and stared down at him hopelessly. “I can’t…”

 

“Okay,” Dick shook. “Just pull out.”

 

“No.”

 

“I’ll be fine. Just…” he tried to levy himself off the other man’s cock and Jason slammed him back down, pinning him in place.

 

Again. “No.”

 

“For fuck’s sake, Jay.” He tried to put conviction and not fear into his voice. “I’ll be fine.”

 

Growled. “You don’t know that. We’ll leave in thirty minutes.”

 

“What if the baby comes?”

 

“Then you miss it. I ain’t fucking you up for that.”

 

Dick writhed, captured by the other man. “C-Clark’s not there, Jay. Bruce needs support.” His voice didn’t hold much conviction. He knew the other man was right. Withdrawing a knot was possible, and _probably_ wouldn’t badly hurt him especially since male alphas didn’t knot as large as females, but the last thing Bruce needed was Dick showing up to hospital bleeding from the worst kind of place.

 

“Okay,” he tried to relax. “Okay just… try and hurry it up, okay?”

 

Jason looked at him suspiciously, not letting go of his hip, and nodded. The silence that followed was taunt and nervous. Jason breathed, slow, deliberate. Dick waited.

 

“Hey,” Dick croaked after a while. “Whatever happened to those rings?”

 

Jason didn’t say anything.

 

“I think we left them in the downstairs sitting room in front of the fireplace.” Dick muttered. “We should go and get them before they get vacuumed up or something.”

 

The alpha traced Dick’s lips with this thumb, the gesture oddly gentle. “You really like ‘em, huh?”

 

Dick blinked. “Yeah. They’re beautiful, Jay.” He sucked in a ragged breath, still keeping his body stiff. “Honestly, it means a lot that you actually care enough to spend some time picking something out. I mean,” he swallowed, “I love them but I love them more because you picked them out for us.”

 

Jason stared down at him.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“I don’t wanna talk about the rings,” Jason muttered.

 

He frowned. “Why?”

 

“I…” he looked away. “I got to think unsexy thoughts,” he muttered, voice dry and painful.

 

Whatever he was thinking about worked because, to Dick’s shock, Jason slipped out of him twenty minutes later. He had expected he would have to wait out the man’s usual thirty to forty minutes. “What were you thinking about?”

 

“Nothing,” Jason rasped. Stood. “Get your clothes on.”

 

He obeyed, grabbed a couple of massive sheep skin jackets, and followed the alpha downstairs. Without a word they pulled out Dick’s newest baby; a brand new BMW R1200GS that he’d taken apart and made a little more interesting. It wasn’t the looker his Harley Davidson was but it was a hell of a lot more functional when it came to weaving between traffic. It would be cold cutting through Gotham midwinter on the saddle but – minus his Honda Gold Wing Valkyrie which was in pieces – it was still the fastest mode of transport they owned not branded with a bat symbol.

 

Jason mounted the bike behind him.

 

They arrived at the hospital only ten minutes after Bruce but, somehow, the media had already got wind of the billionaire’s presence and were assembling outside the building. It took an age to find a parking spot and then wriggle by the spotting of reporters to step into the building. A receptionist sprang up eagerly when she found out who they were and lead them through a confusing tangle of hallways, up an elevator, and through a massive double green door guarded by two muscle bound betas in uniform.

 

Dick learnt why the moment they were through the door.

 

The scent of omega hit him like a wall. Jason physically staggered back.

 

“Fuck…”

 

Dick had never realised exactly how many omegas would go in and out of the hospital’s birthing wing in a day. The answer, obviously, was a lot. There were two checking in, handfuls walking around in pyjamas and hospital gowns, and a lot more already stashed in their private rooms. In amongst it all midwives, nurses, and doctors ran around like bees in a hive, a pregnant beta looked hopelessly out of place chatting with a group of omegas, and a small group of terrified looking alphas huddled together in the corner.

 

“Wait,” he heard someone protest when it became obvious what room they were going to. “Why are we only allowed one birth partner but the billionaire can bring in his whole pack?”

 

The receptionist ushered them through the door.

 

The room beyond was brightly lit, filled with a smattering of medical staff, and had a simple hospital bed set against the far wall. Bruce sat on it, still fully clothed, and listlessly drank some water.

 

“Hey guys…” Dick called out nervously. Tim, Conner, Alfred, and Martha were all sitting nearby on chairs clearly stolen from other rooms. “What’s happening?”

 

“Nothing,” Bruce answered, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, “they gave me a shot of Terbutaline.”

 

Dick stared at him uncomprehending. “Huh?”

 

“He’s only thirty four weeks,” a woman dressed in a doctor’s coat told him. To his shock Dick recognised her. Leslie Tompkins, an elderly doctor that owned a rundown walk-in clinic in the Narrows. She used to stich up Batman and Robin mid patrol when he was young. “We caught the labour early,” she went on, “and were able to stop it before any serious contractions.”

 

“Leslie?” He asked.

 

The woman smiled. “Dick,” looked up. “And Ja- _ck-_ son, is it?” A sly look. “My, you have grown.”

 

“Wait…” Dick looked around, taking in the medical personal. They were packing up and trickling out the door. “You stopped it?”

 

“Yes,” Bruce answered.

 

“Perhaps,” Leslie undercut him. “But he may still lapse back into labour in a few hours. In which case we will have no choice but to deliver.”

 

Bruce. “I want to deliver at home.”

 

The woman’s lips thinned. “We do not deliver preterm babies at home, Mr Wayne. You’re either having the baby here or you're crossing your legs for two weeks. Whatever the case,” she turned back to Dick, “his pregnancy is now high risk and, if we don’t deliver today, I’ll be putting him on bed rest until he’s thirty six weeks and can deliver full term.”

 

Dick stared at her. “There is… a lot going on in the pack right now, Leslie,” he muttered. “I don’t know if we can keep him in bed for two weeks.”

 

The rest of the pack had obviously already heard this and obviously already expressed the same concerns.

 

“You’re going to have to,” she said, sending Bruce a pointed look. “This was a serious attempt, on baby’s part, to attempt to leave early and we’re lucky his water didn’t break. While we can deliver her now it is best, especially given the biology of the sire, to try and keep her at least until the thirty sixth week.”

 

The last of the midwives filed out and Dick took the opportunity to speak frankly. “You think the alien DNA might need longer?” He asked awkwardly.

 

“I think it better to err on the side of caution,” she said. Looked at Bruce. “We’re going to keep you here tonight. If you don’t have another contraction by tomorrow you can go home but I will need you to stick to that bed rest policy, Mr Wayne. For the safety of your child.”

 

Bruce didn’t look her in the eye. “My mate and my son are missing, Leslie. I can’t just stay in bed.”

 

 A pause.

 

“With all due respect, Bruce,” the doctor said softly. “You could lose her.”

 

The silence that followed that statement was deafening.

 

“Leslie,” Dick rasped. “Could you…?”

 

She nodded and stepped out of the room. The moment she was gone Alfred moved to talk to Bruce, voice low and earnest. Dick only heard pieces of the conversation. “…is pack.” Alfred said gently. “You’ve got to keep the pack _here_ safe first. _All_ the pack... We can’t risk another member right…” He didn’t try to pick up more. Bruce and Alfred always had a close bond. One formed from years of being each other’s sole family. A tried, tested, and unfailing connection.

 

Tim stood up suddenly. “I-I’m really sorry but I need to go home.”

 

Bruce rubbed his brow. “You’re okay, Tim. You’re not nesting.”

 

The boy looked mortified for a moment and then directed his gaze down hugged his sides. “I, um, actually need to do something. Like… homework. I need to do homework. I should be in school and Mr Whitton said we needed to do a case study on a local business. A-and I’m not allowed to do Wayne Enterprises so I-I need to think…”

 

Bruce sighed. “Go.”

 

“Thanks,” Tim grabbed his bag. “I’ll take the bus.”

 

“No,” the omega growled, stopping him. “No one goes anywhere alone until we bring down Leviathan.” A look around at the gathered pack. “That’s an order. We don’t know much but we know they can at least contain a full blooded Kryptonian and they could have detailed inside knowledge as to our strengths and weakness. We stay together until we’ve solved this.”

 

Kon stood. “I’ll go with him.”

 

Bruce looked him up and down. “No, you won’t.”

 

“But…”

 

“Jason?”

 

“Yeah,” the alpha stepped forward, sent Kon a dark look, and pulled Tim into his side. “I’ll take him.”

 

“No public transport,” Bruce said. “Don’t take a predictable route.”

 

“I can take the bike and go cross country part way.”

 

“Good.”

 

Jason gave him a look. Dick sighed and tossed the man the bike keys. “Be gentle with her.”

 

“Tim,” Bruce called before they left.

 

The boy turned. “Yeah?”

 

“Put the cave into high alert and change all the security codes.”

 

“Is that really necessary?” Dick gaped. “I mean, Damian wouldn’t…”

 

“I’ll lock down the manor too,” Jason said.

 

“Good.”

 

“Come on guys,” Dick said. “He’s a good kid. He wouldn’t…”

 

“I would also advise,” Alfred cut in, “also informing the police and press about the young master’s absence as well as a possible threat against the Wayne household from an enemy of Batman Inc. We are legitimate now, let’s use that to our advantage. It is better to have all eyes in Gotham searching for something suspicious than just our own. And, it should be noted, a police barricade will slow if not stop an attack from Leviathan.”

 

Bruce was nodding. “Can you handle that Alfred?”

 

“Yes sir.”

 

Conner spoke up. “Could we also say that, um, Superman was helping Batman and went missing so people know to look for him too?”

 

“Yes,” Bruce accepted that quickly. “I’ll tell Diana to tell that part on behalf of the League.” He frowned. “No, I can’t. I’m in here. Could you do that Dick?”

 

“S-sure, but about Dami…”

 

“Dick,” Bruce looked at him. “We’ll get Damian back. I just… I can’t talk about him right now.”

 

Dick stared. “Oh,” his mouth said. “Okay.” He said that as if that was normal, acceptable. As if he wasn’t really just staring at Bruce and wanting to shake him because _he’s your son!_ How could he just accept that Damian could be a threat? How could he move on from that? How could they all walk around thinking Damian was really out there plotting their doom?

 

Tim and Jason left. Everyone else mulled around uncertainly while Bruce and Alfred continued talking strategies. Martha sat beside Conner and tugged at her wedding ring, the young alpha gnawed at the inside of his lip, and Dick stood by the door, useless.

 

After a while Bruce turned his gaze of them and his brow pleated. “You don’t have to stay.”

 

“Oh don’t be silly, boy,” Martha walked across the room to pat his hand. “It’s like you say. We can’t leave each other alone right now. Until that Leslie character gives you the all clear to come home I’m sticking close to you and my granddaughter.”

 

The omega sighed. “Don’t do that Martha, there isn’t any other beds here. I can’t ask you to sleep on the floor. I’ll be back in the manor tomorrow.”

 

The woman puffed up her chest. “I’m tougher than I look, Bruce. Don’t count me out just yet.”

 

“But you do need someone to stay with you,” Dick realised. “If we are staying together.”

 

Bruce looked him for a long time. “I’m not alone.”

 

He crossed his arms. “The baby doesn’t count Bruce. If ‘no pack member is left alone’ is a rule then it applies to you as well.”

 

Alfred nodded his agreement. “He’s right, Master Bruce. The media already knows you’re here and it’s not as secure as the manor. Who would you like to stay with you? While I think it may be a bit brutal on my bones I’m sure I will survive or one of the masters at the manor could return and…”

 

The man groaned. “No. I want you back at the manor, Alfred. You have to man the cave while everyone is on patrol tonight. Martha, Conner,” he looked at each in turn, “I need you two to stick close together and stay out of the public eye, that means you can’t stay here tonight. Leviathan likely doesn’t know you’re here and I want to keep it that way.”

 

Dick felt his stomach sink as he sensed where this was going. “Bruce… I’m going on patrol tonight. I have to keep looking for Damian.”

 

“Tim and Jason can cover that.”

 

“Bruce…” he rasped. “I need to find him. I…”

 

“There is nothing you can do out there right now that Jason and Tim can’t,” Bruce told him bluntly.

 

Dick stared at him, hurt, sick, and angry. “He’s my Robin.”

 

Bruce’s eyes hardened. “I need you here, Dick.”

 

“But… it’s just Jason and Tim. They’ll need help. Gotham’s huge. They can’t just search it alone.”

 

Bruce looked at him. Nodded.

 

Dick’s heart jumped.

 

“Alfred,” the man said. “Contact Barbara and Selina. If there has been any suspicious telecommunication Barbara will find it and she’s an extra pair of eyes on the field. Selina has an ear to the underworld. She’ll be able to tell us if anyone new is stepping on someone’s turf.”

 

His heart crash landed back down.

 

Bruce was right. Barbara and Selina brought different skills to the table and would be more help on the field than him when it came to a manhunt. But Damian was his little brother, Clark was his friend, and Jason… what if Jason was the next person to go missing? He thought about going back to the manor and not being able to fall into the arms of the dark eyed alpha. Not being able to stress fuck, hear the man say he loved him, or talk about their rings lying on the floor in front of the fireplace.

 

Bruce spoke again, softer. “I need you here, Dick”

 

That night he lay in front of the door, a physical barrier against someone entering, and hugged a woollen blanket around his shoulders. The smell of tens of omegas trickled sickeningly strong under the crack in the door, Bruce’s own scent a potent note adding to the mix, and all of it undercut by the stark ugly smell of the sterilised floors.

 

“Dick.”

 

“Don’t Bruce…” he tried to stop him.

 

“Thank you.”

 

He closed his eyes. “I don’t want you to thank me,” he told him.

 

Low. “What do you want?”

 

Dick stared into the dim corner of the room. “For you not to hate Damian,” he answered.

 

A pause. “I could never hate Damian.”

 

“But you think he’s done this to Clark,” he countered.

 

“I don’t know what to think,” the omega told him from the bed.

 

Dick didn’t know how to answer that. Hugged his blanket higher around his shoulders. “I’m tired,” he said. “I think I’m going to sleep now.” A simple lie.

 

Bruce was kind enough not to dispute it.


	10. Chapter 10

Kon stopped, hesitated, and carefully wiped the sweat from his palms on his pant legs. He didn’t know what he was doing here, what he was going to say, but he had to say something. He had to _do_ something. It had been days of not doing anything, of waiting, and he was done. He couldn’t lie in bed another night and pretend everything was okay. Clark was missing, the simple comfort of his life in Smallville was half a continent away, and Tim hadn’t talked to him in days. Of those things two of them he couldn’t do anything about. One he could.

 

He took a deep breath and knocked.

 

Tim’s voice was tired and strained through the door. “Yeah?”

 

“It’s Kon.” He tried to make his voice sound normal. Failed. “Can I… um… can I come in?”

 

A pause, a dull thud as something fell to the ground, and then the door handle rattled as the lock was undone from the inside.

 

Tim poked his face around the massive panel of ancient wood and regarded him. “Hi.”

 

“Hi,” Kon echoed.

 

The omega looked exhausted. He wore a matching pair of long pyjamas, his hair fell untended down to his chin, and there was a fresh purple red bruise around the corner of his mouth.

 

“What happened?” Kon asked.

 

Tim looked confused for a moment then rubbed his jaw. “I messed up on patrol tonight.”

 

Again. “What happened?”

 

Softly. “I didn’t see the second guy.”

 

Kon didn’t know what to say to that.

 

Tim’s had dropped. “Jason wants to bench me for a couple of days. Dick wants me to keep looking. They’re fighting about it.” A pause. “Alfred won’t let us wake Bruce to ask him. I-I guess I’ll find out in the morning.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Silence.

 

Tim scratched the back of his neck unhappily and looked up at him. “Are you okay? Like, I know no one’s really okay right now but… what are you doing here?”

 

Kon insides twisted. “I just wanted to talk,” he muttered.

 

The omega looked up at him, a small frown playing between his brows. “Talk?”

 

“Yeah,” Kon promised. “Just talk.”

 

Tim studied him for a moment longer and stepped back, making room for him to enter.

 

In relief. “Thanks.”

 

Kon had never understood the concept of a life falling apart. Not until it happened. In a matter of hours every facet of his world had slipped away like dancers working to a timed routine. Clark vanished, Bruce ruthlessly uprooted him from Smallville, and Tim looked at him and told him he wanted things to change between them. That one had hurt the most. Not because he didn’t care about Clark, or his life in Smallville, but because it wasn’t an issue that could be solved by rooting out and defeating a villain. It wasn’t something black and white that could be won with his fists. It was him. Tim needed more from Kon, be it sexually or romantically, and Kon wasn’t sure if he could give it. He wasn’t even sure what he’d done wrong. But Tim wasn’t happy with their relationship and that knowledge had been rolling around inside his head for days.

 

Days in which Tim let his pack come between them, in which Tim hung out with Jason, and in which the omega spent hours hiding in his room.

 

Kon stood awkwardly in the middle of that room, hands tucked into his jeans, and let his eyes wander from the mess of mismatched blankets on the bed, to the discarded clothes on the floor, and the curtains tucked closed against the winter wind. It was larger than the room Kon had been given, had its own bathroom attached, and Tim had taken time to hang some posters on the walls. It also reeked of the omega.

 

A musky but sweet scent that rose from everything and sent the nervous flutter in his belly skittering just a little lower.

 

“Tim,” he croaked.

 

“Yeah?” The boy closed the door.

 

“I… I’m sorry about…”

 

“What?”

 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

 

Tim stared at him. “Why?”

 

He hesitated. “For… being too… for not being…” he chewed his lip. “…a good boyfriend?” He finished it like a question.

 

The omega watched him; a detective’s stare. “Why?”

 

“Because you’ve not talked to me, because I’m doing something wrong when we have sex, because you want to change something, because you’ve let your pack hide you away, because I… am messing this up.” He buried his hands deeper in his pocket. “Sorry.”

 

Tim stared at him then looked down. “You know, my pack isn’t hiding me away.”

 

Kon’s heart sank. Whatever that was it didn’t sound like forgiveness.

 

It sounded like something bad, ugly. His pack wasn’t hiding him away. Did that mean he had been avoiding him? Really avoiding him?

 

He was distancing himself. Why would Tim be distancing himself? Unless he was planning on breaking up with him.

 

It was a sick, strange, and terrifying idea because, as childish as it may seem, there had never been an ‘after Tim’ plan. There was never meant to be an ‘after Tim’ to plan for. Within hours of walking out of his birthing pod he had decided Tim was the omega he wanted. Full stop. Back then the whole world had been new, overwhelming, but Tim had eclipsed it all. He didn’t quite understand what it was at first but the boy was fascinating. Each new thing he found out about him an exciting new concept to explore.

 

At first all he knew was he was the leader… and that he was beautiful enough that his mask couldn’t hide it. But he quickly learnt that Tim was kind, clever, and counterbalanced the confusing blur that was Bart Allen. He remembered the moment Tim’s scent mask wore off and he smelt him for the first time. Something had clicked into place then. He didn’t immediately connect it with the word ‘omega’. But Tim smelt soft, sweet, and made something raw and animalistic inside Kon stir.

 

 _Like the fast one._ He remembered thinking. _Like the fast one but… leader… beautiful… smart…_ and there had been something mesmerising about the way, even when his knees were together, there had been space between his thighs… as if he was designed to have something between them… or someone.

 

That night, after a bit of exploring, he came to the conclusion that he was an alpha. And Tim was the omega he wanted.

 

At first it hadn’t gone well. He had extensive theoretical knowledge on the world around him but no hands on experience. Tim saw that and treated him a little like a child. But that was okay. He used that. It allowed him to get away with things an alpha normally wouldn’t. Soon Tim was blushing at all the right times, kissing him in the back of the batcave, and opening his legs in the barn on the Kent farm.

 

The omega he wanted… _the_ omega…

 

What would he do after _the_ omega decided he didn’t like him after all?

 

“Kon?”

 

“Oh,” he rasped. “Okay.”

 

“Okay?”

 

“Your pack isn’t really hiding you,” he echoed and nodded. “That’s fine I… do you want me to go or…?”

 

Tim gazed at him. “You don’t have to.”

 

“But you want me to,” Kon concluded.

 

“No,” Tim said. “Not really.”

 

He looked at him. “Huh?”

 

“Kon,” the boy began, hesitated. “I know it’s selfish but… I want you to be part of this pack. I don’t want to have to leave this pack one day to be with you. And yes, I know, it’s usually the omega that leaves the pack to join the alpha’s pack but… you don’t have a pack. And this is my family. When I’m hanging out with them don’t think they’re hiding me away… you can hang out too. You could be part of us. I know you could.”

 

“Jason hates me,” Kon whispered.

 

“You hate him back,” Tim said with an awkward shrug. “You can still be pack. You can even kind of like each other under the hate. Damian and I are like that. I hate him but I also…” he trailed off, cheeks suddenly looking fallow and white.

 

“Tim?”

 

“I… I’m sorry. It’s just Damian and…” his face crumbled and he quickly turned away. “S-sorry.”

 

“Hey,” Kon approached and stopped, unsure if Tim wanted an embrace right now. “Hey…” he said again. Softer. “It’s okay… we’re going to find them.”

 

“I feel like such a prick,” Tim whispered. “He’s pretty much your dad and I’m here crying about the kid that used to pull out his brass knuckles on me during practise.”

 

“I feel like an arse,” Kon echoed. “You guys are out there risking your lives trying to find them and I’m on guard duty.”

 

“Hey,” Tim looked up. “You’re keeping the manor safe.”

 

“I know. That’s why I feel like an arse. I just want to go out there and look even though Ma, Alfred, your dad, and our sister are all alone here.”

 

Tim’s face twisted in horror. “Don’t call her our sister.”

 

“Why not? Bruce is your dad and you just said Clark is mine.”

 

“No! This household has too much almost incest going around without us calling her our sister.”

 

“But she is,” Kon stressed. “And I don’t know her name.”

 

Tim closed his eyes. “Yeah, I know, but still.” He turned and looked at him, looked at the distance between them, and then up at Kon. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

Tim reached out, took Kon’s hand, and brought it to his hip.

 

Kon’s heart skipped a beat as Tim slowly backed into his embrace.

 

“W-wait… you said you wanted to do things different. Change something. I… I don’t know… is this okay? What do you want to do?” He sounded like a stuttering idiot. The furthest thing from what everyone said an alpha should be. But Tim was leaning back into him, letting his head fall onto Kon’s shoulder, and threading their fingers together.

 

The omega he wanted…

 

In an instant all he wanted to do was kiss him until he smelt sweet and wet, hold him until that body heaved and whined with need, and then fit himself between the other boy's legs. But, whatever this was, it couldn’t erase the cold crawl the memory of what Tim had said in the cave had given him. He wanted to change things, he wasn’t happy, and until Kon knew what the situation was he couldn’t just act as if nothing had changed. He couldn’t just forget what the omega had said. Because there was no after Tim plan. He didn’t know what he would do without him. So he wouldn’t make the same mistakes. He wouldn’t lose him. He needed to fix whatever he had broken before he broke it further.

 

“What should I do Tim? I…”

 

The omega frowned. “I don’t know. You always figure out what to do. Not me.”

 

“Yeah, but…” an idea occurred to him. “Is that the problem? Do you want to call the shots?”

 

Tim blinked up at him. “What?”

 

“With sex,” he tried to explain. “You said you wanted to change something. Do you want to decide what we do?”

 

Kon hated that a part of himself recoiled at the idea. He respected and loved Tim, would follow him to hell and back if he asked, but when it came to sex he’d always wanted to be in charge. There was something unspeakably sexy about being the one giving and controlling Tim’s pleasure, something primly satisfying about seeing the omega sprawled out in submission, and something simply special about being able to dictate what would happen between them; what position, what speed, and what kind of encounter it was.

 

“You can if you like,” Kon told him, voice fallow. “Whatever you want.”

 

“Kon?”

 

“I don’t mind.”

 

“I…” Tim stared at him. “I like the way we do things. I like that you take care of it. You know.” He blushed and looked aside. “It’s nice.”

 

“But you said you wanted to change things.”

 

Tim shook his head. “I said I wanted to change one thing.” The omega’s hand snaked around Kon’s waist and dipped into his back pocket. Kon only kept one thing there.

 

Condoms.

 

He felt the omega remove the bundle of four. They were his favourite. Large, studded, and expensive enough that he felt more or less confident that they wouldn’t break. But, despite it, he felt a surge of hope as he saw the omega finger the string of square packets.

 

“Do you want to change condoms?” He asked hopefully. Could it really be something so minor? “I’m sorry I didn’t ask when I changed type but you seemed to like these ones better and I was always scared the other ones were going to break. They don’t look as strong.”

 

“I went to the doctor,” Tim told him. “They gave me a needle.”

 

“What for?”

 

“Contraceptive.”

 

“Contra—?” The meaning of that word hit him like a bullet. “I…” he stared. “I…”

 

“It only lasts three months,” the omega said. “But, well, I kind of wanted to try it for a while without.” He dropped the condoms to the floor.

 

Kon stared at him. “That’s the change?”

 

“I…” his ears were turning red. “Yeah.”

 

“That’s it? You don’t want to use condoms for three months?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

The silence that followed was thick.

 

Tim squirmed unhappily. “Is that cool?”

 

“Yeah,” he rasped, “yeah that’s…” he kissed him. He hadn’t planned on it but suddenly they were kissing and he knew he had been the one that instigated it by the way Tim tensed and shivered in his arms. He held him tighter, kissed him harder.

 

“Ah! Wait!” Tim withdrew with a flinch. “My mouth…” he touched the bruise there. “That hurt.”

 

“Sorry,” Kon replied, his voice husky and fast. “I’ll only kiss you soft. Man, you’re amazing. I love you. I can’t believe… I’ll kiss you soft.” He pressed their lips together again and wrapped his arms around the omega in earnest. “I can’t believe… thank you… tha—”

 

A loud knock at the door. “Kid. You awake?”

 

Jason.

 

Kon cursed under his breath, let go of the suddenly stiff omega, and had just enough time to fly up and press himself against the ceiling before Jason stepped in, uninvited.

 

Arsehole.

 

“Hey, the big guys awake and pissed no one woke him up. He wants to see your fa…” Jason froze.

 

“I’ll go and…” Tim began.

 

“Where is he?”

 

“Who?” The omega asked.

 

“Who do you think?” Jason snarled, the sound sending a responding flush of protective anger through Kon. He gritted his teeth and stayed quiet.

 

“I don’t…” Tim played dumb.

 

“The not-clone! I ain’t scent blind! Where the hell is he?!”

 

“We just talked,” Tim said. “He left.”

 

Kon hovered above it all holding his breath and straining as he kept himself in the air more through the merit of his TK that any true flying ability.

 

Jason. “Just talked, huh?”

 

To his credit Tim managed to sound legitimately confused in his reply. “Yeah…? So?”

 

The alpha walked towards him. “I ain’t a fucking detective like you, kid. I don’t have the brain. But I ain’t an idiot either.” He kicked the abandoned condom packs. Shiny, black, and with the word’s ALPHA XL capitalised in gold along the bottom. “What the hell are you doing?”

 

Tim stared down at the packets for a long time, raked his hair from his eyes, and looked up. “I’m having sex,” he replied.

 

A warning growl. “Kid…”

 

“No,” Tim said sharply. “Don’t call me that. You know I’m having sex. Everyone knows I’m having sex. I’m seventeen. I have a boyfriend. I have sex. Stop pretending that’s some big fucking surprise because it isn’t. I’m so sick of everyone trying to lock me up in a goddamned tower. I understood before. I got it. That was your thing. Like some stupid, unfunny, running joke. But now I’m old enough to get my own birth control, half the pack is missing, my face is killing me, I’m stress-nesting, and you want to come in here and make me feel like shit for having sex? Really? That’s what you’re going to do?” He shoved passed him. “Give me a fucking break, Jay.” Left.

 

Kon stared down into the room, stunned.

 

Jason stood, equally stunned.

 

“Ki—wait!” The other alpha raced out the door. Kon heard him catch him in the hallway. “It isn’t you it’s him.”

 

A snort. “So if I brought home some other alpha that would be totally fine? Yeah right.”

 

“He’s not good for you.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because he’s a prick! He’s looking forward to taking you away!”

 

“I’m not going anywhere. Why do you think I’ve been trying to make him part of the pack? Trying to get you guys to actually integrate.”

 

“I don’t want him in the pack.”

 

“Why? Because he’s a high level who’s stronger than you? You might not get to be top dog alpha anymore? So what? I’ve never been the first omega. I’ve never been the first anything.”

 

Kon slowly dropped from the ceiling, still listening.

 

“A-and it’s not like he’s just some guy that I’ve brought home. He’s Clark’s son. He has a reason to be here. A lot more reason that I did when I showed up on the doorstep.”

 

“You were thirteen.”

 

“Yeah? He’s one.”

 

“It’s not the same,” Jason growled.

 

Tim sounded exhausted and defeated when he spoke again. “Look, I’m going to talk to Bruce. I don’t want to fight about this now.”

 

“Kid.”

 

“Seriously. Not now. I know you’ve got me benched too or Dick would have been the one to come and get me. So don’t. Just don’t.” Kon heard the omega’s footsteps, light and even, retreat down the hall.

 

“Fuck,” Jason swore. _“Fuck.”_

 

His feet had just settled on the floor when the door swung open and the other alpha re-entered. Jason’s eyes lit on him, lips twitched back from his teeth, and hands balled into fists at his side. “You.”

 

Kon silently cursed himself for not staying in his hiding place until he knew the alpha was gone and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Look, I’m not going to fight.”

 

A hollow angry laugh. “Bull-fucking-shit.”

 

“I’m not! Tim’s right. This is a fucked up time to do this.”

 

“Not stopping you from fucking him,” Jason observed, voice a guttural rumble.

 

Kon studied him. “No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.” Didn’t mention this was the closest he’d come to sex with Tim in weeks.

 

“Well,” Jason sucked at his teeth. “I guess we got to do this now then. Even if it is a fucked up time.”

 

Their gazes met. Held. “I’ve got superpowers, dumb-arse. What are you going to do? Talk me into submission?”

 

Jason. “I’m going to beat the shit out of you is what I’m going to do.”

 

“You want to fight?” He laughed. “Fine. We both know how that’s going to go down. Maybe I’ll even put you on your knees. Make this a pack hierarchy thing. Give Tim his wish.” A glare. “What do you say? Want to give being the second pack alpha a shot?”

 

“You’re not part of this pack,” Jason snarled.

 

“No, I’m not. So I don’t have to put up with your shit.” He walked out, shoulder knocking Jason’s as he passed by.

 

“I was there during his first heat, you know,” Jason called out after him.

 

Kon stopped.

 

“I found him a safe place, I looked after him, and I kept him away from all the alphas that wouldn’t have cared that he was just a kid. And, you know what, I’ve never stopped doing that. The day he went into heat was the day I decided to be a halfway decent first pack alpha and make sure he’s alright. Because I was a shit alpha before that. I’m still a shit alpha. But I look out for my pack. I look out for him.”

 

“He isn’t a kid in heat anymore.”

 

The other alpha looked haunted for a moment. “He’ll always be that kid to me.”

 

Kon didn’t know what to say. He didn’t because, despite himself, he was the same. Tim would always be that kid in heat to Jason and the omega he wanted to him. The one he’d gazed at from afar, the one he had done everything in his power to win over, and the one he’d fallen hopelessly in love with when he blushed and smiled at him for the first time.

 

“He was the first person in my life who liked me without me having to give him something first. The first person that made me feel like this pack was worth it; that we looked after each other, listened to each other, and – under it all – were a family. Bruce never did that. We were like an army to him back then. And Alfred and Dick went along with it. And I was dumb enough to think the reason everything felt so fucked up was because an omega was in charge and not because no one was really looking out for anyone else. Not in the way that mattered.”

 

“Your point?” Kon rasped. He tried to make his tone sound dismissive, angry. Like an alpha from the movies. Instead he sounded small. Like a child asking an adult what happened next in a story.

 

“My point,” Jason stalked towards him. “That kid made this pack. Made it mean something. And I would rather break my fist on your face than let you fuck that up.”

 

“You think I’m going to hurt him.”

 

“I know you are.”

 

“Why? Did you used to hurt omegas?”

 

Jason’s stare was bleak. “I’ve never been with an omega. But I’ve hurt a fuck ton of people. Every person in this pack but Tim. And I’m not going to let you hurt him for me.”

 

“I’m not going to hurt him!”

 

“Yeah you will.”

 

“What makes you so sure?”

 

“Cause you’re a dumb as fuck high level alpha, just like me. But you haven’t figured out that doesn’t mean you can have everything you want yet.”

 

“You don’t know that.”

 

“Yeah, I do. You think pack hierarchy is just a game. That putting someone on their knees isn’t a huge motherfucking deal. You think you can just fight for the top position because you’re a strong alpha and that’s what we do. You think you can just fuck whenever you want because that’s what we do. You think you can come in here when we’re hurting because…”

 

“ _You’re_ hurting?!” Kon yelled at him. “It’s not just your precious pack that’s hurting here, Jason. My dad is gone, my grandma and I are stuck here, and you’re not even letting me have sex with my boyfriend because you think I’m as messed up as you.”

 

“That’s the thing,” the alpha snarled. “The reason why you’re so dangerous, freak, is because you _don’t_ think you’re as messed up as me.”

 

Kon shook his head. “Go fuck your fiancé. It’s the only thing you seem to be any good at.”

 

He didn’t see the attack coming.

 

He just felt the impact of a body against his, saw the ground rise up to meet him, and snarled as his brain caught up with what was happening. He could have held back. He could have shoved the alpha off him and left. But it was Jason; the prick that had been against him from the very beginning, the man who just wrote off how much he cared about Clark, and the thing that always stood in between him and Tim.

 

It was wrong, it was stupid, and it was blindly stereotypical of his caste.

 

But after days of not being able to do anything it felt wildly good just to fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is rough as guts, I'm sorry, and my editing is mediocre at best. I'm used to sitting down and writing a chapter all in one go and then editing it instead of working in dribs and drabs like this. It's really played havoc with my process. I hope you like it regardless.


	11. Chapter 11

A part of Damian hated how easy it was to return to the life he had led under the thumb of his mother. He knew the routine, he knew what was expected of him, and so he fell into line; a weapon for her to use against the barbarism of the world beyond her walls. For the most part she ignored him but that too was something he wasn’t unfamiliar with. He slept stiff and alone aware that any moment his brother might get tired of waiting for their scheduled showdown, he barked orders at the servants hurrying around the ship, and trained in the room where Clark’s body lay forgotten and in slow rigamortis. It was a morbid place; cold, windowless, and wet. But it was the only space he could find where he would not be disturbed as he carefully planned the demise of his heretic twin.

 

Heretic had the advantage.

 

He had the physical body of an adult, was already working under their mother as her principle weapon, and had been trained killing superhumans. The only chance Damian had would be in employing skills he had learnt exclusively with his father. The Batman fought in unconventional and occasionally unique styles. Using those teachings – assuming Heretic had been trained by the masters he had – Damian would be unpredictable. That unpredictability paired with his father’s moves – adapted to be fatal – could give him an edge.

 

If he hit hard and fast, if Heretic didn’t see him train, and if he got lucky.

 

It was a lot of ifs.

 

But it was all he had. His pack wouldn’t accept him back once they learnt what he did and the only way he could be his mother’s again was if he killed his brother. If he died in the fight then at least he died with a place and a purpose. If he left he would just end up wandering until he presented as a low level omega and some alpha picked up him to bite, bed, and breed.

 

A low level omega.

 

The worst caste.

 

According to al Ghul law a low level omega was nothing but a waste of space. Not worthy enough to bear children, hampered with heats that reduced functionality as a labourer, and a distraction to the alphas. The low level betas could still mop floors, the low level alphas were cannon fodder, but the low level omegas were worthless.

 

He was meant to be the heir of al Ghul; the king of the new world. Now the best he could hope for was to prove himself useful enough to keep around. Even if he defeated his brother, even if he became his mother’s weapon, she would probably de-sex him when he presented. He’d seen her done it before. It was a mercy. A way the low level omegas could continue without risking unsavoury reproduction.

 

He should be grateful knowing that that was his fate. He would never suffer a heat, the indignity of being taken by an alpha, or the shame of a pregnancy as a low level omega in his family.

 

But ever since his mother had told him his caste he’d been thinking of Drake. He’d hated Drake when he first met him. A low level omega proud of what he was and taking his place at his father’s side. But now he knew him. Tim wasn’t exactly his friend but he wasn’t… bad. It wouldn’t feel like a mercy taking away his ability to reproduce. It wouldn’t feel right taking away his position as a person and turning him into a weapon. It would feel honourable to follow the law of al Ghul even in its most lenient.

 

He should be grateful his mother was allowing him leniency. He was a low level omega and his mother was letting him to live despite the shame it brought on her name.

 

Not that he would be allowed to keep her name.

 

If he defeated his brother he would become as nameless as him. Heretic, tooth of Leviathan, weapon.

 

It was an ugly future. But it was the only one with any kind of purpose, with any kind of belonging, he could see.

 

“I still struggle with it,” he whispered to Clark’s body, now wrapped in the tattered red of his cape. “Low level omega. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel real. It is hard to imagine what must be inside me. The organs.” He swung his sword at an investable Heretic, practising his routine. “It makes sense though. Why else would she have abandoned me to father? Why else would she dehumanise brother? It is the only conclusion. But if you were alive I would ask you to check.” He looked at the alien. Pale, still, stiff. “I know you couldn’t check my level but if I’m an omega I would have the organs. You would be able to see that.”

 

A heavy silence.

 

“I don’t know what use it is in having it confirmed. None I imagine. But still, I would ask.”

 

No answer.

 

A wretched smile spread across his face. “Better you look than the other Kent. You would do it for free and wouldn’t make it into a huge ordeal. I would have to spend my favour if I asked him to do it and I had big plans for that favour. I was going to make him sabotage the bat cave so I could take the bike out without Grayson seeing.” He felt his smile stiffen. “Besides, he likes low level omegas. He might like it.” He thought about that. He thought about that for a long time.

 

The way Conner would smile at Tim even though their levels were completely mismatched.

 

The way Todd would hold Grayson even though their levels _and_ castes were totally unsuited for each other.

 

The way Clark would gaze at father even though Bruce was the pack leader despite bearing a child.

 

If he was a sexless weapon no one would ever look at him that way.

 

Not that he cared or anything. But… it would have been… nice… even if he was a low level omega… and the other person was an alpha… and he had to be on the bottom…

 

Something inside him prickled with a mix of revulsion at the idea. Revulsion mixed with a strange but unshakable interest.

 

 _No!_ He would never!  He… it didn’t matter anyway. He was either going to be killed in a couple of days or he would become a living weapon for his mother. Either way he was never going to have sex. And that didn’t bother him. It didn’t…

 

“Now would be a really good time for you to wake up, Kent,” he whispered.

 

The body didn’t move.

 

He didn’t expect it to. He wasn’t a child. He knew what things looked like when they were finished. Clark was an alien and invulnerable so he’d expected and witnesses some differences. The slow stiffening of muscles, the gradual leak of colour form his skin, and even the slowly fading heat. Everything slower in the wake of his death than would be normal for a human. Perhaps it would take him a hundred years to rot away. Perhaps a thousand. But he was dead. Damian had checked for a pulse, and for breath. Clark had neither.

 

He wished there was some way he could go back to his father, explain that, and for it to be okay. But there wasn’t. Clark was his father’s mate and he’d killed him.

 

And the body was just going to sit here – his mother’s trophy room – for hundreds of years while it slowly turned to dust.

 

That wasn’t right.

 

He stared at Clark, sword still held ready to strike.

 

He should at least take the body and leave it somewhere father would find it. Then at least they would be able to bury it, at least they would be able to mourn… at least they would _know_.

 

His mind pieced together the plan. He would have to get the body up onto deck, down onto the docks, and leave it somewhere in the streets. It was Gotham, it wouldn’t take long for it to be noticed, and it was still indestructible so the GCPD would know it was the real deal. Father would find out, he’d steal the body in some way, and then they could move on with their lives.

 

 _Yeah right,_ a small treacherous voice sounded in the back of his mind. _You think they moved on after Todd died just because they found a body?_ _No. The body means nothing. You just don’t want to belong to mother. You’re too weak to face what you are – low level – so you’re desperately trying to make things right with father so you can go back and pretend it doesn’t matter. Be like Drake. But you can’t. Father’s never taking you back. The body means nothing._

 

He swallowed that thought like a lump of salt. It meant something. It _had_ to mean something. Even if that meaning was just making it so the last thing he did as part of his father’s pack wasn’t to betray and abandon it. Even if it was just giving them something to bury.

 

He shoved his sword back into its sheathe and turned towards the alien.

 

It was hard but, as usual, he went undisturbed as he stole some tarps and rope from the storage unit, found a trolley, and grabbed rolled up fishing nets from the deck. It seemed to take an age to get Clark’s body from the bench onto the ground where he could briskly disguise it with the tarps and then heave it up onto the trolley. He knew his father weighed ninety five kilos before the pregnancy – two hundred and ten pounds Grayson would insist on saying, the heathen – but he would guess Clark to be over one hundred and five.

 

Damian grunted as he dragged the alien onto the trolley, piled the netting on top of him, and began to haul his cargo towards the door.

 

Man-Bats shrieked and clawed at their cages as he passed, guards bowed and gave him a wide berth, and colourful agents of Leviathan pranced by without a second glance. The sheer weight of his trolley, the limits of his childish body, and the design of the ship meant it took over an hour to move Clark onto the deck and longer still to retreat safely down the gangplank and start towards the gritty grey city beyond the docks. By the time he was on the road the sky was turning a muggy pink as the light of dawn began to bombard the infamous Gotham smog cloud.

 

He didn’t go far. Just enough to find a deserted alleyway not visible from the Mariana’s deck. There he threw off the nets, pulled the poorly bound tarps off the body, and carefully rolled Clark onto the street side. There. Someone would find him, the police would come, and his father would get the body back. He would know. His mother would be angry. They would have to find a new hiding place, she might punish him, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t like the al Ghul’s were ever a pack, let alone a family. It was duty, honour, and blood that bound them together. The Wayne household was different. He wasn’t quite sure what held them together but he knew a body would matter to them. He would inconvenience the al Ghul’s as long as his pack could get some kind of closure.

 

He looked at Clark one more time.

 

It was strange, in the light of dawn he almost looked like he was sleeping. His limbs looked looser and skin almost pink. He could almost believe that this has somehow been a lie. That Clark would open his eyes, Damian would call him useless, and they could go back to the manor.

 

He looked away sharply and strode briskly back towards the ship.

 

 _I must me a low level omega,_ he thought bitterly. _Only a low level would be so pathetic. Only a bitch would be so desperate._

 

“Brother.”

 

He froze. The ship was still some distance away but there was Heretic. His brother. His enemy. Standing in his bizarre uniform in the shadow of the dockside warehouse. His face was covered with a vented metal mask, a sword hung from his belt, and a ragged cloth was loosely knotted around the Batman-esque prongs crowning his skull. Despite the sun slowly breaching the horizon no one else was around. The streets empty but for a few wandering rats.

 

“Brother,” Damian responded coolly.

 

A sneer. “Were you running away?”

 

He snorted. “You wish.”

 

“You think I fear you?” A harsh bark of laughter. “If it were up to me I would have killed you already, brother.”

 

“You would have tried.”

 

“I would have succeeded!” He yelled, accent thick. “I would have killed you! I will kill you! Then mother will make me her weapon! Not you! She’ll forget about you!”

 

There was something wrong with him, Damian realised. Something beyond the fact that he smelt two, looked thirty, and spoke with the voice of a ten year old. There was something not quite right, not quite with it, in the way he spoke and jumped straight to aggression. Something off balance. Mad.

 

For a moment Damian wondered if that was natural or a result of all the things their mother had done to him. If they had been born to father and raised as twin brothers in the Wayne household what would they be like? What would Heretic be like? With a pack? A name? A body and brain that matched his age and a family around him?

 

It was a sick painful thought. One he didn’t want to think. Not when he had to try and remove the head from that body. But he was thinking it. Thinking it more every second.

 

“You think you’re a worthy weapon?” Damian heard himself rasp. “Fine.” He drew his sword. “I’m done waiting for this.”

 

Waiting to die. Waiting to take his place at his mother’s side. Waiting to pay the price of his stupid selfish letter to Talia months before.

 

Heretic stared at him. “But mother said…”

 

“Her name is Lady Talia!” Damian yelled and attacked.

 

It was blissful.

 

He’d left Clark where the pack would find him and now he didn’t have to wait to see his fate. If he lost he wouldn’t even have to face Talia and admit what he’d done. Perhaps his father would track her down before she even moved on. Maybe he would defeat her. Drive her out of his territory. Behead Leviathan. After the last few days just fighting, just taking that next step,

 

Heretic drew his sword. Metal met metal with a dull rasp.

 

Damian used his adapted version of father’s moves, Heretic responded with brute force tampered with poorly leashed skill. But, despite it, he was good. Wild, unchecked, but there was a lot of power in his body and even if he was only properly harnessing a portion of it. Still… he wasn’t as deadly or prepared as Damian had expected. He had a chance to win here. To kill.

 

To be everything his mother wanted him to be.

 

Everything Lady Talia wanted him to be.

 

Everything his father despised.

 

With a yell he hacked at his brother’s legs, feigned back when the creature bellowed in pain, and parried the responding strike off the flat edge of his sword. When Heretic grabbed at him he dropped and rolled back.

 

“Coward!”

 

“Abomination,” he accused with a hiss.

 

His brother stalked closer. “You call me that because I am better than you.”

 

“I call you that because it is what you are!” He threw himself into another exchange of blows. “Mutant! Clone! Low level!”

 

“I am no copy!” In Arabic. _“It was luck that I was born second! It was luck that I was frozen and you were kept! But you were raised as an heir and you failed. So I am made a weapon. Just a weapon. Because of you.”_ Their swords met. _“Mother says you were born imperfect. She says it all the time! She says you were weak.”_ Another clash of steel on steel. _“She made me perfect. She made me strong. But she still always talks about you.”_ They parried again. _“When I kill you she’ll forget about you. When I kill you she’ll talk about me.”_

 

“She doesn’t care!” Damian yelled and knocked Heretic’s sword away with a wild swing.

 

They both paused, caught off guard by the unexpected turn of events. Then, as if someone had injected electricity into the space between them, they jerked forward.

 

Damian attacked and Heretic grabbed the blade, headless of the blood as it cut deep into his hand. The battle after that was a blur. A succession of quick time events, each one less lucid than the last. He lost his sword, was slammed clumsily down across a knee, and broke his brother’s hand. He was picked up by the throat, managed to jab his finger through the mask into his twin’s eye, and cut him with a piece of shorn metal he found on the ground. He hacked at his throat, was thrown into a nearby wall, and punched at the bulky body of the other boy. Somehow he managed to throw him off him and dropped to the ground to try and find a rock, or another piece of metal. He came up short but his brother didn’t. His stomach dropped as he saw Heretic reach for and find Damian’s dropped sword.

 

In that moment he knew he had lost.

 

He was bleeding into his mouth, his back and shoulder hurt, and his hands were jarringly empty. There was no way he would be able to turn away the killing stroke he could already see moving towards him. No way to call off this stupid match.

 

He heard himself try though. “Mother…” a small pathetic sound. The word he would use when he was younger when one of the masters had gone too far in training, he’d gotten hurt, and he wanted the teacher to be punished. “Stop him…”

 

But his mother wasn’t listening.

 

The sword entered him between the ribs. Not painful. Not really. Just keenly unquestioningly wrong.

 

For some reason he felt it more going through his back than he had going through his chest. He wondered why as he looked numbly down at the blade still sticking out from between his ribs.

 

It occurred to him Heretic had missed his heart. He would be dead by now if he hadn’t. He’d missed Damian’s heart because something had struck him at the last second.

 

Damian looked up and blinked in confusion as he saw the two figures grappling. One in blood smattered white with a metal mask and the other in torn and tattered blue decked out with a royal red cape.

 

“Kent?”

 

The man that couldn’t be his father’s mate managed to throw his twin off him and turned to Damian. For a moment he felt large hands cup his face, check his pulse, and brush against the sword sticking out of him.

 

“You’re alive?”

 

The sword was drawn out of him with one smooth slide. That hurt. Much more than it going in. _“Ah!”_

 

Fresh blood spilt down his front and it suddenly became harder to breathe. Lung, a small part of his brain registered. It had pieced his lung. But before he had a moment to process that information, before he knew what it meant, the man that couldn’t be his father’s mate’s eyes were blazing red.

 

“C-lark!”

 

The blood had stopped, he could breathe again, but it hurt. A lot.

 

“Run Damian,” the man that couldn’t be his father’s mate said. “Run home. Go!”

 

Stupidly. “C-can’t you fly us?”

 

The man shook his head. Of course he did. He could barely stand. What made him think he could fly? Especially after just using his heat vision… because that’s what he’d done wasn’t it? He’d used his heat vision on him. He’d closed the wound inside and out which was why breathing hurt so much… but also why he could breathe.

 

The man who couldn’t be his father’s mate pushed him towards the alley mouth, towards Gotham, and turned just as Heretic attacked again. The two battled. Slow, clumsy, but still skilled and deadly enough not to be a street brawl.

 

“Damian! Go!”

 

Later he would tell himself he could have stayed. That he made a decision to leave. A coward’s choice. But, at that moment, he obeyed without thought. Numbly, blindly, and still clutching at his middle as he struggled to breathe; he ran away. Alive and clinging desperately to that fact.

 

Saved by a dead man.


	12. Chapter 12

Jason stood hunched and leaning against the wall as the sun slowly rose outside. It was, as always, a murky polluted pink around the spires of Gotham's infamous skyline but fanned out with solid planks of golden light over the jagged landscape leaning into the seaside. He could see the large pronged wings of the bats flying home for the day. Spots of black against the crisp rainbow sky.

 

He stared out the window, taking in the sight, as Alfred approached the bed and muttered in Bruce’s ear. The not-clone stood beside him, bottom lip held nervously between his teeth, and face void of all the bruises Jason could feel throbbing to angry life around his left eye, across his knuckles, and over his chest. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bruce’s eyes darken and turn towards them standing at the foot of his bed.

 

“Now?” He muttered, voice dangerously soft. “You two decide _now_ is the time for this shit?”

 

“He attacked me!” Conner protested.

 

“I don’t care.”

 

“But…!”

 

“Conner,” Martha said gently, stopping him. “Be quiet now.”

 

Again. “But…”

 

“This is their pack. This is their pack leader. This is their territory.” She let those statements settle for a moment. “Be quiet now.”

 

Conner’s eyes scanned the room looking for an ally. Tim sat on a nearby window ledge, a blanket hugged around his shoulders, and eyes resolutely away from both them. Dick was slumped in an armchair looked utterly exhausted and staring at Jason with an unreadable expression. Alfred had straightened beside Bruce’s bed and gazed on with acute disappointment. None of them were offering any support… to either of them.

 

“What was it?” Bruce rumbled. “What was it that made you two think now was the fucking time?”

 

The room descended into stiff silence.

 

Bruce’s glare was black as he studied them. “Tim,” he concluded. “This was about Tim wasn’t it.” Not a question.

 

The young omega hugged his blanket tighter around his shoulders, eyes away. He didn’t say anything.

 

“Did Tim ask you to fight?” Bruce pushed.

 

Conner shook his head. “N-no.”

 

Jason didn’t move. Stayed stiff and hunched forward.

 

“What the fuck makes you think you can come into my territory and disrespect an omega like that?”

 

“I… I didn’t…”

 

“What the hell makes you think you can come here and attack my pack?”

 

“But he…” Conner sounded nothing like the angry young alpha he’d fought with. He sounded small, out of place, and scared. “He…”

 

“Jason,” Bruce’s attention turned to him. “What the fuck gives you the right to do that to Tim?”

 

He stayed silent.

 

“Jason attacked me,” Conner insisted. “He’s been mean to me ever since he met me.”

 

“Conner!” Bruce silenced him with a snarl. “You don’t realise what you’ve done do you? You’re not pack. This isn’t a pack dispute. This is an attack on my pack.”

 

Conner paled. “But… it was…”

 

“This isn’t something you can _talk_ yourself out of! I need you all to pull together now so we can find Damian and Clark! Instead you attack my pack? You attack each other?”

 

“But… I thought… I’m kind of like pack…?”

 

A flat stare. “Is that what you want?”

 

“I… I don’t…” he swallowed. “Look, I didn’t mean…”

 

Bruce threw back the bed sheets and, ignoring Alfred’s protests, stood and advanced towards them. “You didn’t mean it? Is that what you’re telling me? You didn’t mean to do _that?_ ” He pointed at Jason’s face.

 

Jason wondered what that meant but didn’t lift a hand to inspect the damage.

 

“I…” Conner looked at Jason and then back at Bruce. “I’m sorry I…”

 

“You’re sorry?” The omega took another step and glared down at the young alpha. Somehow despite his rumbled clothes, bloated pregnancy, and hagged appearance he still looked terrifying. Eyes the piecing pale blue of a glacier, teeth showing through parted lips, and hands balled into fists at his side. “Tim isn’t old enough for you to have _any_ right to him. Even if he was that’s his choice. Not yours. Not Jason’s. His.”

 

Conner looked up and quickly down.

 

“No,” Bruce grabbed his hair and forced his head back. “ _This_ is how you submit. You want to be treated like part of this pack? You submit to me. You show this pack some fucking respect.”

 

Conner was shaking but holding the position. Jason hated him a little for that. Being an alpha it went against the grain to hold a submissive positon for an omega. At least, that was what it felt like for him. It was sickening to see another do it so easily on their first attempt. A reminder of what kind of pack member he had been when he was Conner’s age. The kind of alpha he was guarding Tim against. Would keep guarding Tim against no matter what Bruce said.

 

Because Bruce was the pack leader but Tim was the pack.

 

“You’re half Kryptonian,” Bruce told him softly. “We never told you what that might mean because we wanted you to figure out who you are without worrying what you might or might not be.”

 

“Bruce…” Martha started, looking uncomfortable. “Is this the time?”

 

For the first time Tim had turned around and was looking at the fight, a pleat between his brows.

 

“Kryptonians have no packs,” Bruce ploughed on relentlessly, talking to the boy before him. “Your pack instincts, if they exist, might be weak or impaired.”

 

Tim. “What?”

 

“So I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. This time.”

 

“No,” Tim said. “No. He has pack instincts. I know he does.”

 

Conner looked like he’d just been stabbed in the back. “Tim…”

 

“No,” the omega looked at Bruce. “I know he has pack instincts. I’ve seen it. Don’t just put this under the rug. He fought with Jason over me like I’m… property.”

 

Connor. “It wasn’t like that!”

 

“Yes it was!” Tim yelled. “You hurt my pack because you think that’s how you’ll get to have sex me!” He hugged his blanket tighter around his shoulders and turned away. “And Jason tried to hurt you because he thinks that’s how he’ll stop it.” His breath hitched. “I’m sick of it. So fucking sick of it. Damian’s missing, Clark’s missing, and that’s all you two are thinking about? How to beat each other up so I’ll do what you want?” A low, broken, rasp. “I thought you guys were my best friends.”

 

Dick stood. “Hey, Timmy,” he moved across the room and wrapped his arms around the omega. “It’s okay. They were just being dumb dogs. Alphas do that sometimes.” The beta threw Jason another long unreadable look. “It’s okay.”

 

“Conner,” Bruce brought the not-clone’s attention back. “I’m letting you off easy this time.”

 

“No…” Tim protested weakly, still within Dick’s embrace.

 

Conner’s eyes flicked between Tim and Bruce, his face twisted with pain as he registered Tim’s distress. “This is easy?”

 

“If you don’t respect us, if put one more fucking toe out of line, I won’t let you near my pack again. _Any_ of my pack. Understand?”

 

“Tim I…”

 

“Understand?!”

 

Conner looked back at him. “Yes.”

 

“Show me your neck when you say that.”

 

He complied. “Yes. I-I understand. I won’t… please just let me go over to him.”

 

“No.” Bruce dismissed him quickly and looked at Jason. “Why did you attack him?”

 

He didn’t respond.

 

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been quiet…” his gaze flicked up and down his body and a spark of raw rage flashed across his face. “Stand up straight.”

 

Jason tentatively rolled back his shoulders, flinched, and hunched again. His voice was shallow, pained. “Can’t…”

 

Bruce swore and began to feel Jason’s middle. When the omega’s fingers touched his left side Jason hissed and knocked his hand away and silently shook his head. Speaking hurt – breathing hurt – so he didn’t waste time on any words.

 

“Fuck,” Bruce snarled and spun to face Conner. “Get on your knees!”

 

Dick straightened. “Wait… what’s happening?”

 

Conner looked uncertain as he sunk down, as willing as before, and clumsily mimicked a submissive pose. “I’m sorry. I just...”

 

“He’s got two broken ribs,” Bruce answered. “At least.”

 

Dick’s eyes widened. _“What?!”_

 

“It’s just two,” Conner mumbled. “He still threw me down the stairs afterwards.”

 

Martha stepped forward. “Conner… what did you do?”

 

“No!” Dick yelled and stood. “That’s not okay! That’s not a fucking dominance brawl. That’s a fucking attack!”

 

“No,” Jason hissed at him, voice a dry croak. “I’m… fine…”

 

“Clearly.”

 

“I… am.”

 

“Don’t give me that shit, Jay. He broke you fucking ribs.” He strode forward. “Unless you pulled out some fucking kryptonite that’s not okay.”

 

Tim stared at the wall in numb horror as Alfred approached and gently located the tender area on his side. “Ah, yes. It’s two but they’re broken on two places. Hold on, Master Jason. Once we pop these back you should be more comfortable.”

 

“What if one of them had pieced his fucking lung?!” Dick was yelling at Bruce now. “He would have died. It’s a fucking attack.”

 

“I would have done something if he got badly hurt,” Kon muttered.

 

“Yeah? How about not fucking hurting him?”

 

Jason cried out as the butler deftly pulled the bones back into alignment. Immediately the resonating pain across his middle lessened and he tentatively straightened taking in his first full breath in an hour. It still hurt when he stretched but otherwise it was manageable. “I’m fine,” he said, voice only slightly strained this time. “It’s no big deal.”

 

“It’s a huge deal,” Bruce rumbled, eyes locked onto him. “You can’t go on patrol.”

 

“I can.”

 

“No, you can’t.”

 

“You’ve been out before with broken ribs,” Jason reminded him. “You can. I can.”

 

“Swinging on a grapple will knock them out of place,” Bruce told him. “Landing with any kind of force will too. Right now looking over your shoulder might do it. You’re not going anywhere.” He raked a hand through his hair. “ _Fuck._ This is the _last_ thing we need right now. We’re going to have to put Tim back in the field.”

 

Jason. “No! You took him out for a reason.”

 

“You should have thought of that before you decided to break you fucking ribs fighting over who has the biggest knot.”

 

“He almost died!” Jason protested. “You can’t send him out right now!”

 

“I’m not sending Dick out there alone.”

 

“I can do it.”

 

“No you can’t!” Bruce yelled. “Why the hell did you start this fight? What the hell was going on in your brain?”

 

Jason scowled and looked over at Conner still sitting forgotten on his knees. The boy looked terrified, confused, and his gaze was still flicking between the people now massing around him and Tim sitting forgotten across the room. He could almost forget, looking at him, the kind of alpha he was when no one was looking. Almost.

 

_Go fuck your fiancé. It’s the only thing you seem to be any good at._

 

Little fucking prick. How could he know anything about that? How could he understand? All he wanted was an omega to fuck. How could he understand what is was like to be crazy about someone – to be in love – and fail them at every turn… but one. How could he even fucking figure out how much it hurt knowing he had to lie to his partner about who picked out their rings? Or who told him to change his name to Grayson? Or any of the other things he’d supposedly done right outside the bedroom?

 

It was like Dick said; they were dumb dogs. But the difference was he knew it. He could see himself failing Dick in every way but the way he was biologically programmed to be; a fucker.

 

But, whatever else he was he was also an alpha and he wasn’t about to cry about getting punched too hard in a dominance brawl. Especially not to an omega. It was petty, it was stupid, but it felt good in a strange kind of way to be the stereotype alpha for a little while again.

 

“I don’t know,” he answered. Stare flat.

 

Bruce glared back at him. “You don’t know why you attacked him?”

 

“No.”

 

“Show me your neck and say that.”

 

Jason shivered with a sickening flood of humiliation but managed to jerk his chin up slightly and monotonously declare; “I don’t know.” Bruce had the right to put him on his knees beside the not-clone right now. It was almost a mercy to be told to declare submission in such a minor way.

 

“Now look in my eyes and say it.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Do it.”

 

Jason scowled, looked at Bruce and hissed the words. “I don’t know why I attacked the fucker, okay? You done?”

 

Bruce studied him. “He said something didn’t he? You were fighting verbally at first and he said something that took it too far.”

 

Jason’s gut tightened. “No.”

 

Bruce looked down at Conner. “What did you—?”

 

“I said no!”

 

“Was it about Tim?” Bruce asked, gaze back on him.

 

“No.” He said before he could stop himself. “Wait! I mean…”

 

“Good,” Bruce said. “At least this all wasn’t about who got rights to an omega.”

 

“It’s not about getting the right to Tim,” he said. “It’s about keeping him safe. I thought you got that.”

 

“Get up Conner,” Bruce growled, ignoring him.

 

The not-clone scrambled to his feet.

 

“ _I_ don’t think you knew what you were doing,” Bruce told him. “ _I_ don’t think you really understand what a pack is yet.”

 

“Bruce!” Tim protested.

 

“ _He_ does,” the older omega added. “So you’re going to have to work out forgiveness from him in your own time. And you’re going to have to do it where we can see you. You two aren’t going to be behind closed doors together.”

 

“O-okay.”

 

“But you attacked my pack, you hurt us, and you’ve made it _a lot_ harder for us to find my son and my mate. To find _Clark_. You understand?”

 

Conner bobbed his head in a nod.

 

“If you weren’t family you would be gone from here. But you are. So I don’t want to see you do anything that isn’t good for this pack. I know you’re missing Smallville but it’s time for you to deal with it, earn your keep, and show some respect.”

 

Bruce’s gaze snapped onto him. “You.”

 

“Me,” Jason rasped.

 

“Keep the manor safe.”

 

“That’s a bullshit job,” Jason told him. “I want to be out there.”

 

“You’re not the only one,” Bruce growled. “You want to keep Tim safe? Keep this place safe for _when he comes back from patrol_. If you start anything I’m putting you on your knees.”

 

“Wait!” Dick stepped forward. “That’s it? He _broke_ Jason’s _bones!_ ”

 

“That’s it,” Bruce told him.

 

“That’s not good enough!”

 

Low. “We’re done here, Dick.”

 

“If that’s the case, Master Bruce,” Alfred appeared at his side. “Might I suggest…”

 

“I’m going back to bed,” he growled. “Just… give me a second.”

 

Jason looked at Dick and studied the unshielded anger on the acrobat’s face. Dick saw him watching, cast one more look around the room, and grabbed Jason’s sleeve. Without asking permission or apology he began tugging Jason’s shirt off.

 

“Fuck,” he shrugged him off with a gasp of pain. “What the fuck are you doing?”

 

Behind him Martha was towing Conner towards the door, Alfred was trying to tempt Bruce back into bed with a bat computer liked tablet, and Tim was frozen on the window ledge, blanket tight around him and gaze fixed on the changing sky outside.

 

“For fucks sake, Jason. You could barely talk and you want me just to walk away and accept that? Show me your ribs.”

 

He glared at him, glanced around the assembling pack, and gingerly pulled his shirt up over his head.

 

The beta hissed between his teeth as he revealed his chest. The point of impact was obvious; targeted by a massive purple yellow bruise. Gently Dick touched it, feeling the bones beneath and the fresh seams in them. A breathless whisper. “I can’t believe Bruce let him off with a warning.”

 

“What was he going to do?” Jason muttered.

 

“I don’t know. Something.”

 

“What?”

 

“Something!” He hissed. “God, why the hell did you have to fight him? Now? Why did you have to get hurt?” He rested his palm against the bruise. “I was so angry when Martha told me what happened. How could you do this to us? Both of you? Now? I’m _still_ angry.” He swallowed. “But fucking hell this is not okay. This isn’t just a kneel-now-get-off-with-a-warning kind of thing. I need you out there, man. I fucking need you right now.”

 

He leant forward, glanced up at Bruce, and whispered in the beta’s ear. “I’ll go.”

 

“No, you won’t,” the man responded loud enough to be heard. “I’m not going to get you killed. I can’t do that.” He shook his head. “Tim can do it. Tim and I will find them. We have to find a lead soon.”

 

The boy looked up as he heard his name and then away again; gaze fixed out the window and brow pleated. Conner and Martha were out of the room and Bruce was sitting on the edge of the bed and refusing to go down further. Alfred had foolishly already given him the tablet and he was accessing the Batman Inc. mainframe.

 

“I’m fine,” Jason said softly. “I could do it. Bruce has done it. It doesn’t hurt that much.”

 

Dick’s mouth twisted in a dry bitter smile. “Says the guy that can’t take his shirt off without looking like he’s giving birth.”

 

“That’s fucking bullsh—”

 

“Jason,” he stopped him. “You fucked up. I’m angry that you fucked up. But it means that you can’t go out. Not until your one piece again.” He looked down at the bruise, sighed, and leant forward to breathe in his ear. “It also means you’ve finally converted me on Kon. That… fucker.”

 

Jason frowned. “You call him Kon too?”

 

“It’s his name.”

 

“It’s Tim’s name for him.”

 

“Actually it’s his Krytonian name.”

 

“No,” Jason dismissed that idea, still talking under his breath. “That’s bullshit. You never call Clark Kal. You call Conner Kon because that’s what Tim calls him. Calling him Kon means you’re putting them together. You’re accepting them _with_ each other.”

 

“Honestly Jason,” Dick sighed. “I think he thinks of himself as Kon.” A pause. “He thinks of himself as _with_ Tim.”

 

“But…”

 

“All I can hear is you two saying ‘Tim’ and ‘Kon’ over and over again!” Tim called out. “Can you not? I know you hate him, and think I can’t handle myself, but can you at least be quiet about it?” The omega slipped off the window ledge, kept his blanket around his shoulders, and marched out of the room.

 

Bruce watched him go with a critical eye, flashed a look at them, and turned back to his tablet with a frown. He was hacking into something, Jason could tell. But he wasn’t sure what.

 

“Tim thinks you hate the not-clone too,” Jason commented.

 

“Kon? Yeah,” Dick leant against him, careful to avoid the bruises. “I do too right now. I mean… he _knows_ how hard to hit something. You were a dumb-arse for attacking him but… he _knows_ when he’s breaking bones. He has too. Otherwise, how does he shake hands? Hug? Have sex? He couldn’t do that if he didn’t know how strong he was.”

 

Jason growled. “I don’t want to talk about him fucking.”

 

“No,” Dick muttered. “Me neither.” He hooked a hand behind Jason’s neck and pulled him forward into a deep steady but short kiss. Full enough to capture him for a moment but brief and caste enough not to draw the attention of the bat and the butler still on the other side of the room. Still it stirred something inside him. Something raw and painful. Something that made him want to prove to Dick he was worth a kiss stolen in front of their pack leader.

 

Jason leant forward and whispered against the other man’s lips. “I love you,” he promised, voice little more than an exhale. “I always fucking love you no matter how shit at it I am. I want you.”

 

Dick misinterpreted the message with a cocked eyebrow. “You’re asking for sex?” He whispered back incredulously. “Now? After you just fucked up so royally and with the two guys that raised us _over there_?”

 

“No, I… I just meant…” He licked his lips. _The only thing you’re good at._ “I don’t think I can have sex right now.” His ribs were hurting at the peak of every inhale, face throbbing, and mind still bogged down and sick with the memory of his confrontation. Beyond that the sight of Bruce and Alfred quietly arguing over Dick’s shoulder was less than a turn on.

 

“Why?” Dick asked.

 

“It hurts when I breathe deep,” he muttered as point of explanation.

 

“Yeah?” To his amazement Dick smiled and his hand dropped to discreetly palm his crotch, the action hidden between their bodies. “That’s okay,” he muttered. “I don’t think I can either. The moment I close my eyes I start falling asleep. Like, every time I blink. But, you know, it’s nice to touch…” he rubbed the heel of his palm against Jason’s member. “Even if we just crash for ten hours.”

 

“You start touching me,” Jason muttered as he let his hands reach around and fist the globes of the other man’s arse; a quick grab before he turned it into a platonic embrace. “I’m going to want you to keep touching me.”

 

“You’re making the hungry face,” Dick accused. “I thought I was tired and you were crippled?”

 

“I’m not making a hungry face.”

 

“No,” Dick agreed. “You’re making _the_ hungry face. I can tell. Even with the black eye I can tell.”

 

“Black eye?”

 

“Yep. But that one’s your own stupid fault. We’ll just make sure, if it’s still there at the wedding, that we shoot you from the right side.”

 

“I need to pace!” Bruce’s voice intercut their moment as he pushed off the bed. “I can’t think unless I pace.”

 

“Then you won’t be doing a lot of thinking,” Alfred insisted as he grabbed the omega’s wrist and clung on doggedly. “It is best you stay in bed.”

 

“I’ve been in bed for fifty hours, Alfred.”

 

“And you promised Doctor Tompkins you would be there for at least three hundred and sixty.”

 

“I haven’t had any pain, bleeding, or tightening since the damn hospital. I’m fine. I jus—” the tablet lit up in his hands and he turned towards it.

 

“Master Bruce, you do realise what’s at stake here?”

 

“Yes, Alfred, I realise it,” the man growled as he worked.

 

“Then why do you persist…”

 

“I was sitting down, reclining, when my first labour happened.” His eyes flashed as he found something on the tablet. “I got a hit on Superman.”

 

Dick jerked out of Jason’s arms like he’s been electrocuted. “Y-you have a lead?!”

 

The omega’s eyes blazed with desperate light as he worked. “It’s a local Facebook update. ‘Saw homeless guy dressed like Superman in a street fight’. It’s from the Gotham dockyards. Fourteen seconds ago.”

 

“The docks,” Dick gasped. “Which dock? I could get down there in fifteen minutes.”

 

“I can be down there in two,” Bruce growled as he dialled a complex code into the tablet. “Remote access Batman Inc. Zero four seven two five nine five zero two one eight one. Deploy all units: Gotham dockyards. Command priority one: seek and rescue Superman and Damian Wayne.”

 

Dick stared in shock. “W-what did you just do?”

 

Bruce looked up. “I sent the robots.”

 

He blinked. “We have robots?”

 

Jason approached slowly. “What kind of robots?”

 

Bruce’s face was lined. “Wayne Industry robots.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave myself Sunday off this week. I think it's pretty obvious what I spent the day doing.


	13. Chapter 13

He was alive.

 

It hit him like tidal wave.

 

Blistering, violent, overwhelming, _beautiful_ life.

 

He could move, see, and breathe.

 

He could _feel_.

 

He could feel the air against his skin, the ground under his feet, and the cold blistering hatred bursting open like a wound deep in his gut. A kind of hatred that terrified and consumed him – could destroy him – as it burnt, blistered, and boiled through his veins.

 

Clark stood, his feeble powers teetering on the brink of death, and glared at his enemy. It wasn’t the boy turned weapon holding a bent sword in a massive fist or any of the man-bats crawling towards him on folded leathery wings. It wasn’t the decorative warriors or the crazy pop criminals tittering from the sidelines. It was the woman behind them; hair drawn into a sharp bun, features pinched, and dress tight around the confined curves and lean muscle of a classically alluring alpha female.

 

Talia al Ghul.

 

Leviathan.

 

The woman who’d raped his mate, tried to kill him, and almost brought about the death of her own son. The woman who’d abandoned Damian, mutated her second child beyond recognition, and – if Bruce was right – turned Jason into a killer.

 

The woman who’d hurt his family again and again and again. The woman who’d put him in that black place where there was no feeling, light, or life. The woma—no, the _monster_ who was here – in Gotham – to hurt, kill, and destroy everything that was important to him.

 

“It lives,” she said to a man at her side; large, round, and bald head decorated with a tattoo of a snake with a second head in the place of its tail. It was a crest that was repeated on a lot of the guards; the mark of their mistress Talia al Ghul. The message was clear. If Ra’s al Ghul was the head of the demon, Talia was the equally as lethal tail. “You told me it was dead, Ubu.”

 

“Forgive me Lady Talia.” The massive man rumbled. “It must be able to feign death when threatened. This time I shall remove its head and heart.”

 

“I can do it!” Damian’s mutated brother cut in. “Let me do it. I won’t fail you.”

 

“Daylight,” Talia observed, lips twisting with distaste. “That must be it. It has risen again in the daylight. In full view of the public.” Her hand clenched into a fist. “This will force my hand. No doubt my beloved has already become aware of our presence and if he doesn’t know I am behind Leviathan he soon will.” Eyes dark with rage. “I was hoping to have more time to prepare but we have to move onto stage five.”

 

“But, Lady Talia,” the man – Ubu – protested softly. “We are not ready.”

 

“Fortunately, Ubu, neither is my beloved.”

 

“Leave him alone!” Clark heard himself yell. “You hear me?!”

 

The woman’s eyes flashed black with anger. “I will do with my omega what I see fit, alien.”

 

“Your omega?” He heard himself rasp.

 

“Yes, alien, _my_ mate,” she hissed. “Do not think because you have stolen the use of his body to bear your hybrid spawn that he is yours. He is the chosen property on my house and I am taking him back.”

 

He glared at her as he felt the hatred boil over inside him.

 

From this distance, with the meagre power he had left, he could kill her. A single burst of heat vision and she would be dead. The darkness of that thought should have terrified him. But, in that moment, it was beyond tempting; a savage tug of animalistic desire to end it all before she hurt again.

 

It was a hatred he thought he only reserved – only had to crush down – for Luthor. He was wrong. But, what was worse, was he didn’t know if the reason he held back was because he was holding onto his morals… or because he could see one of the man-bats stalking through its fellows with the amulet that had robbed him of his powers in the museum clutched in a clawed hand.

 

He didn’t have a lot of power left. Perhaps only one burst of heat vision. Just enough to kill Talia… or destroy that amulet before it got close enough to cripple him again. One shot, two choices, and the amulet was getting closer.

 

“Let me kill him,” the deformed boy begged again. “I can do it. Let me kill him for you, moth—”

 

“I am Lady Talia!” She yelled.

 

He cringed away still holding the blunt sword he’d bent on Clark’s skin.

 

The man-bat with the amulet was still approaching. He had to destroy it. He had to…

 

“How can you think he’d ever want you back after what you did?” Clark heard himself. “You hurt him.”

 

Her eyes narrowed and for a moment she looked like Damian. “Is that what he told you?”

 

Clark glared at her. At the spot between her eyes that would mean a fatal wound. “If you knew him at all you would know the answer to that is no.”

 

“Would I?” Her eyes bore into him; black and baneful. “You think to tell me what I should and should not know. You think to tell me he is yours.” She snorted. “He is a high level omega, alien. A high level omega who rules over a city. Such an omega cannot be claimed with a bite. He can only be claimed by a destiny.” Her lips were thin, shoulders back. “And his destiny was decided by the house of al Ghul the moment my father discovered him.” She drew herself up further, hand resting on the long curved sword at her hip. “He will bear the heir of al Ghul; the king that will inherit the Earth.”

 

Damian’s brother. “Let me kill him Lady Talia!”

 

“It is actually fortunate, alien,” she continued, ignoring him, “that you saw fit to steal from me when you did. I had long assumed his ability to bear gone; that I had wasted my time raising a child who was unsuitable for the role. You proved me wrong.”

 

The man-bat was dangerously close now. He had to make a choice. One shot, two targets, and the person who he hated the most on the face of the planet.

 

“You _raped_ him!” Clark yelled. “How the hell can you stand there and talk to me like that?! Like you have any right to _any_ part of his life after what you did?!”

 

She looked bemused at this. “An alpha cannot rape an unclaimed omega.”

 

He felt his eyes flare red of their own violation. He almost killed her then. Almost, without a thought, crossed the line he’d swore to himself and to Bruce he never would.

 

“You are an alpha too, alien. Do not pretend you do not know this.” She went on as if she wanted him to do it; as if she knew how close he was to the edge and was testing to see if she could pull him over. “You know what it is like when you knot an omega. Even if the act before was violent when a tie is created an omega will become drowsy and thus stop resisting. An alpha will instinctually care for and admire the omega in this time. Fall in love, as it were. It is natural. It is _right_. It is how the human race found mates before society saw fit to add rules and regulations.” Her nails rasped along the hilt of her sword. “While the weak alphas were out finding food to try and win an omega the strong _took_.”

 

He couldn’t control the blaze of red in his eyes now. Could see it reflected in the swords of the man-bats hissing and chattering away to each other. “So you _took_ him?” He whispered, unable to keep the shake out of his voice any longer. “You mon—”

 

“Darling Bruce never needed to be forced, alien.”

 

“You drugged him!”

 

“Never forced,” she muttered. “But sometimes… manipulated.”

 

He felt the burn in his eyes flare white hot just as the man-bat lurched towards him, one clawed hand clutching the amulet already throbbing with sickening magical promise. With a cry that left his throat raw he spun around and shattered the throbbing gem with his last burst of heat vision.

 

That was it. His chance. His choice.

 

He’d done the right thing… but some strange sick part of him regretted it.

 

“ _Tt,_ ” Talia’s nose wrinkled as she saw the broken artefact. “How irritating.”

 

“Moth—Lady Talia,” Damian’s brother was practically pulling at her skirt; desperate for her attention. “You don’t need it. I can do it. I can.”

 

Ubu. “We have wasted too much time here, my lady! The bat will be upon us soon.”

 

“Let me do it.”

 

When the woman spoke it was to her army. “Kill it.”

 

The man-bats hit Clark like a storm. Leathery wings, talons scraping against his skin, and jagged in human teeth gnashing together. He was weak enough that it hurt. A sword left a red welt, a slash of claws felt jarringly close to breaking his skin, and for the first time in years he felt his muscles protest the weight of their massed bodies.

 

But he fought. He couldn’t run and, even if he could, Damian was wounded. The boy had been stabbed, was limping when he ran away, and had hit his head hard enough to have a concussion. He might not have gotten far. Clark needed to keep the focus here, keep Talia occupied, and give Damian a chance to get back to Bruce.

 

To give the boy a chance to get home and explain to Bruce all the things Damian had explained to him when he was in the black place with no sight, no _feeling_ … but somehow sound… as if coming from a long way away. While he floated in that place, not sure if he was dead or alive, Damian had told him everything. He was blaming himself for Leviathan, he had come to rescue Clark, and he had cried himself to sleep when he’d thought he’d failed.

 

He was everything his mother wasn’t – good, brave, and empathic – and Clark would give his life to try and make sure he got away safely.

 

With a roar he threw off the first wave of man-bats only to be hit by the second. More wings, more claws, and more skin stinging as he got weaker and weaker; as he exerted his powers to hold off attacks.

 

A third wave followed the second and then a forth. An endless storm of malice.

 

“Where’s Damian?” Talia’s voice was almost lost to his ears. A small point of reference in the back of his mind. “Where is my son, Ubu? Why is he not here?”

 

“Your son,” Damian’s brother whispered. “Why is _he_ your son?”

 

Ubu. “I don’t know, my lady.”

 

“Why not me?” The deformed boy demanded. “Why is he your son and not me? I’m better than him.”

 

“Where is he?” Talia snapped back. “I will not ask again. He should be here to witness this before we’re forced to leave. It is his doing that we were able to bring about this victory.”

 

A long pause.

 

Clark cracked the forearm of one of the creatures and threw it into the others. The fifth wave was thicker and he saw one of the swords leave a red line on his skin. It was strange, almost dreamlike. There was none of the earth shattering fear or pain he remembered from the museum. Just a drive to last longer. Even if it was just seconds longer. Long enough for Damian to get away.

 

“I killed him,” Damian’s brother answered. Voice rough, angry, and childish behind his metal mask.

 

“What?” She whispered.

 

“Your _son_ , Lady Talia.” He spat the words out. “I killed him. He’s dead.”

 

“Y-you killed him?” For the first time Talia’s resolve faltered.

 

“I put my sword through his heart.”

 

Clark knew the boy was lying. He knew he – Heretic as Damian called him – had seen his brother run away. But he spoke now with the vindictiveness of a child trying to get attention through the only method left available to him. Hurt.

 

“I…” Talia whispered. “I didn’t tell you to do that.”

 

“You were going to have me kill him. I know you were.”

 

“I didn’t order you to kill him. Not yet.”

 

“But mothe—”

 

“Lady Talia!”

 

Clark didn’t know what had happened until after it happened. Even then he didn’t quite understand it at first. Not until he saw Heretic’s head hit the ground five feet away from the rest of his body.

 

Talia wiped the blood on the hem of her skirt and quickly sheathed her sword. Then, without a word, she turned and strode back towards her ship; flanked by a small army of warriors as the man-bats continued to attack him. It was dizzying, sickening, and wrong. _No,_ a part of him rebelled against it. _No. That’s not fair. That’s not right. That’s not the world I’m meant to live in._

 

_No…_

 

A man-bat finally managed to sink its teeth into his shoulder. He cried out, threw the thing off him, only to have a second bury its claws in his forearm. Blood pooled and splashed like water from a fountain, his fist cracked the jaw of another wailing creature, and his body promised with a wave of dizziness that he was bleeding out. He ignored his flesh’s useless protest of pain and tried to fight through the crowd just to get one more look at the body lying abandoned nearby.

 

Damian’s brother.

 

A boy that, if he’d grown up beside Damian as he should have, could have been anything. Maybe even something like Batman. Maybe a part of the pack. Another face at the table that would make a face when Jason made a heavy handed remark, or Kon slipped Tim some extra food, or Bruce said his pregnancy wasn’t slowing him down. _Not fair. Not right. Not just._

 

Something slammed down onto the man-bats directly in front of him. A massive glittering metal body shining with sleek dark prongs. Behind him another took care of a new approaching horde of the creatures. He had just enough mind left to figure out they were robots. The first of dozens landing in the area all proudly stamped with a yellow and black symbol in the middle of their chests.

 

He ignored them, took to opportunity to stagger towards the body of Damian’s brother, and – with a surge of strength he didn’t know he had – ripped off the arm of a robot that tried to stop and drag him away. It was a useless battle. As he looked he could see the man-bat ranks were breaking apart, Talia’s ship had turned into a submarine and submerged, and the robots were one by one turning towards him as if he was their target. _Well,_ he thought numbly as the blood on his forearm continued to stream down onto the ground at his feet, _if they are here to kill me they better do it fast._ He was in sunlight but it wasn’t strong, he was weak, and there was no way his body would heal that wound before he bled out.

 

He bent down, lacking the energy or will to determine whether the machines were friend or foe, and set the head of Damian’s brother back onto the rest of his body.

 

A small dignity in death and momentously lacking.

 

 _I should have killed her,_ he thought as one of the robots wrapped a metal arm around his middle and hoisted him into a surprisingly soft metallic embrace. It was a terrifying thought; a sickening one. But, at that moment he couldn’t stop himself from thinking it over and over again. _I should have killed her. I should have killed her. I should have killed her._

 

This time when the dark place like death came he welcomed it.


	14. Chapter 14

 

Tim had never seen Bruce and Clark kiss.

 

He’d seen Dick and Jason kiss. They kissed all the time when they thought no one was watching, and sometimes even when they thought they were. But, stretching his memory back, he couldn’t recall ever having seen Bruce and Clark even hold hands or peck each other on the cheek. If they engaged in any kind of romantic or flirtatious physical contact at all it took place exclusively behind closed doors.

 

That was, until one of Bruce’s robots whirred back into the batcave med bay tenderly carrying an unconscious bloody Superman against its metal breast.

 

Bruce – who was upright much to Alfred’s distress – effortlessly directed the machine to lay out his mate on the industrial strength solar bed. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: as if it were something they did publicly all the time, Bruce bent over, cupped Clark’s face in his hands, and kissed him.

 

Jason looked away, Alfred stopped talking for a moment, and Dick blinked as if he’d been hit between the eyes by a flying baseball.

 

Tim clutched the fresh pear he carried to his chest and tried not to stare.

 

It wasn’t sexual. It didn’t even look very romantic. It was just an acknowledgement. _You’re here. You’re back. You’re alive. You’re okay._ In that moment he didn’t understand why his classmates complained about their parents kissing. It was the most natural, the most normal, and the most earnest thing in the whole world. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew Clark and Bruce had sex. He knew they slept beside each other. He knew they loved each other. All the kiss did was substantiate that fact. But, after everything, it was a nice thing to have substantiated. A simple reminder that the pack they had, despite everything, was built on love and not pack bonds or their superhero personas.

 

The only people that seemed not to be stunned – or shamed – into silence by the kiss were the Kents, standing away from the pack with patchy pale faces under the med bay’s sterile light.

 

“Is he okay?” Kon asked as the solar light generators continued heating up.

 

“Yes,” the omega answered; voice unbearably soft as he retreated slowly from the kiss. “He’ll be okay. He’s going to be okay.”

 

“Okay? He’ll be okay?” the young alpha echoed dumbly.

 

Again. “He’ll be okay.”

 

“He’s bleeding,” Martha noticed and pointed to her son’s forearm, stained a vivid red. “I’ve never seen him… oh lord…”

 

Bruce unapologetically detached the ragged remains of Clark’s cape and pressed it against the wound. “It’s okay. He’ll be okay.”

 

“When?” Kon asked. “When will he be okay?”

 

“I don’t know. You can help set up more solar light generators,” Bruce waved at the ones already positioned over the bed and then towards the storage room. “The more he has the faster he’ll heal.”

 

“S-sure!” Kon rushed to obey.

 

Martha moved to follow then hesitated. Strained. “Shouldn’t he be outside for that?”

 

“These lights are stronger than the sunlight he’ll receive if he were lying on the lawn,” Bruce promised. “They’ll make him better.”

 

The batcomputer chose that moment to chime in. _“Search complete. Found no sign of target: Damian Wayne.”_

 

“Do it again! Three mile radius!”

 

_“Order acknowledged.”_

 

 _Damian…_ Tim rolled the pear around his hands and tried to swallow down the sick bubble of fear that rose up his throat. He never liked Damian. The boy had hit him with brass knuckles the second time they met, used to torment him on the way to school, and never quite got over his blood son elitism. No, he never liked him. But he was pack. He was family. He was important. _It’s okay,_ he told himself. _The robots found Clark. They’d find him. They couldn’t be far apart. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to be far apart._

 

Martha. “You shouldn’t be standing, Bruce.”

 

“Quite right,” Alfred jumped in, voice oddly thin. “You really must return to bed, Master Bruce.”

 

Low. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

“Master Br—”

 

“Come on, we can find something,” the woman cut in. “Or we could move that?” She nodded towards one of the stiff hospital beds crammed into the corner. It didn’t have any bedding on it and the plastic mattress was a pale green. “That would work.”

 

Wearily. “Would that work, Master Bruce?”

 

The omega grunted. To Tim the sound could have meant anything but the two betas seemed to take it as assent.

 

Tim hovered; unsure how he could help as Alfred and Martha moved away to get the bed, Kon rigged a light in record time, and Bruce began shamelessly shedding his mate of clothing. There was sense in that. The more skin exposed the more solar radiation he would absorb. Oddly, he found himself less shocked by that than the kiss. And, naked, he could also see where the solar lamps weren’t shining on him.

 

“Kon…” he started forward. “Can I hel—?”

 

“Tim,” Dick’s hand snaked out and caught him.

 

“What?”

 

The man licked his lips and cast a quick look around. “Let’s go upstairs for a moment.”

 

Voice raw. “Now?”

 

“Yeah,” Dick tugged him away from the scene and towards the rocky arch that would lead them out into the main cavern of the cave. “I need to talk to you.”

 

He caught sight of Jason watching as he was towed away and felt a nervous flutter of uncertainty spark behind his ribs. “What is this about? I want to help.”

 

“I know Tim. That’s what we’re doing.” The moment they were around the corner Dick veered off course and – instead of going upstairs – dragged him deeper into the cave, ducking out of sight behind the monitors.

 

Uncertainly. “Dick?”

 

“You heard the computer,” Dick shot over his shoulder as they stepped over lines of bolted down cords. “Those robots haven’t found Damian. I can’t take anyone else. Heck, no one else has a nose like you. Not even Bruce. You can track him down.”

 

Realisation came to him slowly. “You want to go out?” He muttered. “Batman and Red Robin? _Now?_ ”

 

Whispered. “Yes.”

 

“It’s daylight!”

 

“ _Shh!_ So?”

 

“So, we just got back an hour ago.”

 

The beta sent him an outraged look. “That’s _Damian_ out there, Tim. I don’t give a damn about proper protocol right now.”

 

“No,” Tim planted his feet. “I’m not going.”

 

Dick stared at him in disbelief. “Did you not just hear me? That’s _Damian_ out there. I know you two didn’t get along but he’s _pack_.”

 

“The docks are crawling with man-bats, Dick,” Tim tried to reason with him. “You remember how those things smell? There is no way I can track anyone through that.”

 

“We have to try! The robots didn’t find anything.”

 

“Look, I want to get Damian back just as much as you,” Tim told him.

 

Hoarsely. “Do you?”

 

Tim tactfully decided to ignore that. “But going there now is pointless. And risky.”

 

“No it isn’t.”

 

“You know it is,” he said. “If it wasn’t you would have told Bruce you were going out. You know he’ll say no.”

 

“That’s his son,” Dick snarled. “What kind of father would say no?”

 

“We’re going to find him,” Tim articulated carefully. “The robots will find him. I know they will. It’s okay.”

 

Dick looked strange in the gloom of their hiding place. The reflected light of the monitors’ highlighted lines Tim didn’t even knew he had and cut gritty grey shadows along the shape of his cheekbone. His hair was getting long again and hung listless and unkempt from his skull.

 

Softly. “That’s it, huh? You would rather stay here, eat fruit, and help Conner?”

 

Tim looked at the pear in his hands. “It’s just… He’s ju—”

 

“Okay,” Dick rubbed at his brow. “Okay, this is what I don’t get. Less than an hour ago he broke Jason’s ribs and, somehow, you’ve already forgotten about that and want to jump in to help him.”

 

Tim stared. “But he was setting up the lights.”

 

“And you called him Kon.”

 

“T-that’s his name,” Tim stuttered, hating how weak his voice sounded.

 

“That’s his _pet_ name,” Dick pressed. “That’s his name if you’re not angry at him.”

 

“I always call him Kon,” he mumbled.

 

He was angry at Kon. He was. And he was angry at Jason too. The alphas had fought over him like he was a piece of meat. Like they not only had the right to choose what he did with his life but that that right was something that could be exchanged behind his back through an act of physical aggression. They had done that less than an hour ago. But suddenly that time seemed like an age.

 

He was angry, he was hurt. But did he have to cling to that anger _now_? Clark had just come home. Did Dick really expect him to keep Kon at an arm’s length right now?

 

Judging by the look in Dick’s eye, he did.

 

Perhaps that was the right thing to do. He always let Kon get off easy. He knew he did. Whenever he was angry at him the other boy would produce a freshly picked sunflower, fly him up to see the sunset, or just somehow persuade him into relenting his grudge in exchange for an intimate afternoon in the barn loft. But this was different. Clark had come home, his heart was rallying around the pack leader’s estranged kiss, and when the bat-robots found and brought Damian home the pack would be whole for the first time in days.

 

It wasn’t like working with him was forgiveness… right? Or would that be seen as giving mixed signals? Being frivolous? God, was he really expected to care about any of that right _now_?

 

He wasn’t planning on forgiving either alpha so easily. They had decided between each other that the one person who should have no say in his life was him. It was the first time in his life he truly felt discriminated against for being an omega and what was worse was that it stemmed from the two alphas he cared about the most. That betrayal was what hurt. That was why he was angry.

 

 But surely this could eclipse that for a moment. _Surely…_

 

“I’m angry at Kon,” he said defensively. “I am.”

 

Dick didn’t say anything, lips thin.

 

“But it’s not because he broke Jason’s ribs,” Tim told him. “That was Jason’s fault.”

 

The beta’s eyebrows arched. “You’re saying it’s Jason’s fault that Conner hit him hard enough to break his bones? The victim is to blame?”

 

“No…” Tim struggled to keep his voice even. “I’m saying he was as much a prick as Kon was for being in that stupid fight.”

 

Dick made a disgusted noise. “Conner _broke_ Jason’s _bones_ , Tim. How can you look at that situation and not think maybe that’s an alpha you don’t want to encourage? The least you could do is wait a _day_ before you go skipping to his side again.”

 

Tim looked down. He felt small, he felt angry, and he felt powerless. All those emotions trapped inside a body that felt irrationally minuscule beside Dick despite the fact that they were almost of a height. “I’m not encouraging…” he muttered. “I was just offering to help.”

 

“You could help by helping me,” Dick told him. “We could still get out there. We could find him.”

 

Again. “No.”

 

“For fucks sake!” The beta abandoned any attempt at keeping his voice down and raked his hands violently through his hair. “I can’t believe you’re letting him get away with this! I can’t believe you let that guy _bite_ you! Just because he has the look doesn’t make him Superman, you know.”

 

 _“Dick!”_ Tim squeaked. “Y-you promised you wouldn’t tell anyone about that!”

 

Kon had bitten and marked his neck six months ago. It had been a one off thing; a teenage token of togetherness – a stupid summer love moment – that Tim had managed to hide from everyone in the pack… except for Dick. He was lucky Dick had been the one to catch him. Anyone else would have told Bruce and he would have been in trouble. Dick, on the other hand, seemed to empathise and had taken a solemn oath of secrecy under the condition that Tim stay off the bite until he was eighteen. Since then he hadn’t heard anything about it… until now…

 

“I’m not _telling_ anyone who doesn’t know,” Dick snapped. “I’m _talking_ to you about it.”

 

“D-don’t talk about it.”

 

Angrily. “Why not? That’s another free pass you gave him. Has this kid ever had any consequences in this relationship of yours?”

 

Wretchedly. “Yes…”

 

“Really?”

 

He tried to force more surety into his voice the second time round. “Yes.”

 

Low. “Where did you get the pear, Tim?”

 

“The kitchen,” he lied.

 

“Bullshit.”

 

“I…” he looked away. “It was in my room, okay. If he’d given it to me directly I would have turned it down.”

 

Relentlessly. “He broke Jason’s bones, attacked your pack, and within the hour you’re accepting food from him.”

 

“N-no… the pear it’s… it’s not just food…” his voice sounded small, hopeless. “It’s a joke.”

 

“Yeah?” Dick crossed his arms. “Because it just looks like you’re receiving romantic gestures.”

 

“No, look,” he fished for the words that would somehow make it sound reasonable on his lips. “It was a joke from the Teen Titans. We were just chatting, hanging out, talking about stuff. We worked out the apple was the sweetest fruit but the pear was the best one because it was sweet and dangerous. An apple is something nice. A pear is a weapon in disguise. Kon said he’d give me a pear because that’s what I’m like; sweet and dangerous.” It had been an awkward but wonderfully ridiculous moment of public affection at the time. It sounded stupid now.

 

Incredulously. “Why do you think pears are dangerous?”

 

Tim’s lips flicked involuntarily towards a smile at the memory. “Roy showed us.”

 

Voice tight. “Roy showed you what?”

 

Slowly he raised the pear to his mouth, bit the stem, and pulled it out of the portly fruit. Taking the stem between his fingers he held it up, showing Dick the end that had been inside the pear. The tip was crowned with a series of jagged points like a nest of spears.

 

“Sharp as a baterang,” he promised and tapped the tiny weapon gingerly with the tip of his finger. “Roy can spit it into a bullseye across the room.”

 

Dick stared.

 

“It’s… it’s awesome actually… and it’s just a gift. I wasn’t going to…”

 

“A gift that just happens to be food,” the beta said.

 

“Yeah but…”

 

“Like an alpha gives an omega?”

 

“Look it…”

 

“And you accept it? Straight after what he’s done?”

 

“I wasn’t going…”

 

“You’re letting him get away with it. I can’t believe it. You’re just letting him get away with it.”

 

Tim felt a bitter froth of anger fill his stomach and looked away in a bid to hide the heat in his cheeks. “It’s just a gift.”

 

“No, Tim it’s n—”

 

“At least my boyfriend understands me enough to get me something I like.”

 

Darkly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

Without looking up. “You know what it means.”

 

“Jason does get me things I like! He got the ri—!”

 

“I got the rings!” He hadn’t intended to say it. He hadn’t intended it to sound so sharp. But he had. And the words felt powerful and undeniably justified on his tongue. The truth. Simple, plain, and crude.

 

Dick stared at him. “What?” He rasped. “No. Jason got them. You’re lying.”

 

“You haven’t shown anyone yet,” Tim reminded him. “So how do I know they’re white gold? How do I know the alpha band has a titanium finish? How do I know your one is inlaid with diamonds around the rim? How do I know they came from Marie Eternity in the South Gotham mall?”

 

The beta looked at him, face pale. “You?”

 

“I’m not forgiving Kon,” he told him. “I’m not. But I’m not going to abandon the pack, or him, just now. Clark’s just come back. We’re going to get Damian back. We need to stick together.”

 

Softly. “But… he…”

 

With more strength than he felt. “I’m not going to go out behind Bruce’s back. I’m not doing that, Dick. It’s not the right thing to do right now.”

 

“I…”

 

Tim spun on his heel before any of the bone rattling weakness in him showed on his features and sunk his teeth into the pear. It was juicy, sweet, and still somehow felt like sandpaper as it slid down his throat. He swallowed regardless, stepped out from behind the monitors, and returned to the med bay.

 

Kon had set up all the lamps he could, Alfred and Martha were pulling Bruce onto the bed, and Jason was walking towards him; absently holding his broken ribs. “Hey, kid. Where’s Dick?”

 

He looked up at the alpha, didn’t answer.

 

“Kid?”

 

“I think he’s…”

 

Dick walked in behind him, stopped, and looked at Jason as if seeing him for the first time. Turned to Tim. “I’m sorry, Timmy. You’re right. The bat-bots, or whatever they’re called, will find him. The pack’s got to stick together. Now more than ever.”

 

“Dic—” Tim began.

 

“I’m sorry for losing my shit for a bit there.”

 

“Hey,” Jason reached for him.

 

Dick stepped back. Kept his face directed towards Tim. “Thanks for telling me the truth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter is so short and skeletal! Things have been absolutely insane on my end. I've got several major projects in the works, one which requires a week's travel into the country, and I'm being kicked out of my house next month so I'm trying to find a new place on top of that. Don't get me wrong; life is good... but it's also a bit of a clusterfuck right now.
> 
> But, to make it up to you, I'm going to share with you the wonderful work of SusanneOh who has put together a gorgeous piece of fanart inspired by this story: [Superman and Damian](http://susanne93.deviantart.com/art/Superman-and-Damian-526718254) . Seriously, it is amazing. Check it out. I may have cried a little.
> 
> Also, one of my projects I worked on last semester was a webseries which is very near and dear to my heart. I'm releasing it shortly and I would really love to share it with you guys if you're interested. [A Plague on Both Your Houses](https://youtu.be/PzbRVv020Io) . I will love you forever if you watch it and - if I can get a high enough view on the counter - you'll even help save my grades.
> 
> Thanks so much! I truly wish I could post more because I love you guys. :)


	15. Chapter 15

“Master Bruce?”

 

“Yes, Alfred.”

 

“I think you better come upstairs. You see it’s…”

 

“A guest.” Bruce guessed.

 

Softly. “Yes, sir.”

 

“Commissioner Gordon.”

 

Again. “Yes, sir.”

 

He knew it would happen. He just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

 

Bruce reached out and gently ran his thumb over Clark’s cheekbone down to his lips. He’d been doing that a lot these last few hours. Touching. Just touching. Clark’s wrist, cheek, and chest. Touching enough that the back of his hand was already a hot angry pink; the light that was slowly but surely healing Clark burning him faster than a summer sun whenever he reached into it.

 

“I’m not going anywhere.”

 

“Sir…”

 

“Tell him I’m not in.”

 

“He has a warrant, sir.”

 

Across the room Martha sat up straighter. “A warrant?”

 

Alfred looked uncertain. “Should I wake the boys?”

 

“No,” Bruce muttered. “Let them rest.” Dick, Jason, Conner, and Tim were all asleep upstairs. The last few hours had been brutal on them. Tim was hurt on patrol, Jason and Conner’s fight hadn’t been kind on either alpha, and Dick wasn’t taking Damian’s unknown whereabouts well. They had also all gone to bed separately. He didn’t know the whole story but he knew there were cracks yawning wide in the pack. He was their leader and, if nothing else, he would take care of them well enough to give them time to recover.

 

“Bruce?” Martha muttered. “What’s going on?”

 

“I may be under arrest,” Bruce answered.

 

She stared. _“What?”_

 

He knew this would happen. He’d hoped he would be able to talk to Clark before it did.

 

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised his prone mate and swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed. Alfred was clearly unhappy he was back on his feet but didn’t protest as Bruce made his way towards the stairs that would take him to his study, one arm hugging the weight of his protruding belly as they walked by rows of batsuits. The butler followed close behind as if to help him if he needed. He didn’t but his presence was a comfort regardless.

 

_Not alone._

 

They emerged from behind the grandfather clock, took care to lock it, and Alfred gently pushed Bruce onto the couch and threw a blanket over him. He accepted the position but stayed sitting up, blanket hugged around his shoulders, as the beta left to retrieve their visitor.

 

Commissioner Gordon was a middle aged alpha who never seemed quite at home between the square of his shoulders. Dull copper hair was giving way to grey, his moustache needed a trim, and broad rimmed glasses sat low on a large nose. He stepped into the room looking decidedly uncomfortable and smelling of cigarettes. Bruce knew the man hadn’t smoked in years. There was too much wrong at that point to guess what it was that had tipped the man over the edge.

 

Two police officers followed him. A male beta with large watery grey eyes and a female alpha with a shaved head. They both gazed around the decadent room with slack jaws until Alfred offered a cup of tea.

 

“Mr Wayne,” Gordon began as the butler left.

 

“Jim,” Bruce responded. “You’re doing your own dirty work.”

 

The man sighed. “You know why I’m here.”

 

“Yes. I’m guilty.”

 

A long look. “No you’re not.”

 

“What makes you so sure?”

 

Gordon rubbed unhappily at his chin. “An army of bat-themed robots are stolen from your company to aid in what looks like a Justice League affair.” The alpha moved across the room and sat down opposite him, leaving a comfortable amount of distance between them; an alpha aware he was deep within another pack’s territory and talking to a pack omega. “Call me crazy Mr Wayne, but that sure sounds like Batman to me.”

 

“The robots were made for him.”

 

“Yes, and he used them before any finalised agreement with your company. Wayne Enterprises reported the breach in security seconds after it occurred. That’s over a million dollars worth of equipment. That’s grand theft. Grand theft that was shockingly easy to trace back to you.”

 

“I am aware. I was aware when I was doing it.”

 

“The robots were remotely hacked,” the man stressed. “In seconds. With a pre-set authority code the company wasn’t aware of.”

 

Stiffly. “Your point?”

 

“You’re telling me _you_ did that, Mr Wayne?”

 

“Yes.”

 

A heavy sigh. “I’ve seen this before, Mr Wayne. It’s in Batman’s profile. You shouldn’t protect him.”

 

“Why would I protect Batman?”

 

“Because you know if Batman gets criminalised again you’ll lose Batman Inc.” The alpha spoke frankly. “Because you know I’m not going to drag you down to a police station heavily pregnant on bedrest.” A hard look. “Because Batman means something to you, doesn’t he.” Not a question.

 

“I admire his work.”

 

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Gordon tapped the side of his neck with his first two fingers. The universal sign language for bond mark.

 

Bruce reached up and touched the skin under his jawbone, feeling the hidden shape of his omega gland. It had been days since Clark last bit him but they were bond mates and it took a long time for any mark Clark left to fade. He could feel the soft imprint of the alpha’s teeth. Not just an accidental mark but – as it was: soft, pink, and accepted by his body – an obvious indicator of a long lasting mate bond. Something Bruce Wayne infamously shouldn’t have.

 

His eyes narrowed. “You think Batman’s my mate.” It was a mistake to leave his neck exposed. But he was willing to play this one to the end.

 

“Have you seen the news lately, Mr Wayne? I am not the only one that has come to that conclusion. I walked in here with a suspicion but now that I see you’re wearing a long established bond mark,” the alpha shrugged. “I am not going to condemn you for it. The man has been a friend of mine, if you can call it that, for a long time. You and your pack have been a friend to my daughter for almost as long. And I do admire what you’re doing with Batman Inc. I do, Mr Wayne. But don’t let his crimes appear on your record.”

 

He snorted. “You think I give a damn about my record? If Batman’s criminalised Batman Inc. is gone.”

 

“So you admit it? You’re covering for him?”

 

“No. I’m not.”

 

“Mr Wayne.”

 

“I stole the robots,” Bruce said slowly. “To look for my son.”

 

A strange look filtered across Gordon’s face. “The GCPD is looking for your son, Mr Wayne.”

 

“But you haven’t found him.” Bruce continued softly. “He’s been gone for days. I needed to try something.”

 

“Mr Wayne…”

 

“You’re a father, Jim. You understand.”

 

The alpha pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Yes, Mr Wayne,” voice quiet, “I understand.”

 

Bruce nodded. He was, in that moment, the most honest he had ever been in his public persona of Bruce Wayne. The part of him that was Batman was still under the surface but the veil was thin and he couldn’t will up any of the frivolous meaningless masks that were Bruce Wayne: playboy billionaire and media darling. Instead he was dangerously close to himself and he was speaking, man to man, with the alpha across from him.

 

“This is what’s going to happen,” Bruce said. “You’re going to place me under house arrest, I’m going to pay bail, and once my daughter is born I will go to court.”

 

“You could do time.”

 

With more confidence than he felt. “But I won’t. I’ll be paying a fine.”

 

“The courts haven’t been kind to you in the past,” Gordon reminded him. “What makes you think this time will be different?”

 

“This time I’m an omega in distress looking for my son,” Bruce tried to inject surety into the statement. “The courts won’t be able to resist pointing out how the omega that shamed the Gotham legal system is – under it all – still just an omega; instinctual, volatile, and emotionally rigged to blow when it comes to my children. This time I’m the distraught bearing parent that stepped out of line while conforming to conservative omega ideals, not the cheating stealing bitch billionaire.”

 

Gordon analysed him with a cool careful regard, clearly interested with this new Bruce Wayne.

 

“I’m not going to jail,” Bruce told them as much as himself. “But I did steal those robots.”

 

The two officers, still standing by the door, were shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

 

“Now,” Bruce stared back at Gordon, “charge me with the crime and get out of here.”

 

Alfred chose that moment to walk back into the room with a tray of freshly brewed tea. Bruce hoped the action didn’t undermine his dismissal too much as the three policemen hesitantly took the offered cups. The female alpha smiled without showing her teeth and the male beta blinked owlishly down at his drink.

 

“Eh, Commissioner,” the beta spoke up. “Could I talk to you outside for a second?”

 

“Now’s not the time, Black.”

 

“I’ll only take a second.”

 

Gordon growled, stopped suddenly when he remembered he was in the presence of an omega, and with a hurried apology stood and walked the beta out into the hallway. The door swung shut behind them but Alfred reached out and subtly stopped it from latching.

 

“This is very good,” the female alpha said holding up her cup, oblivious to Alfred now quietly listening by the door. “What is it?”

 

“What’s your name?” Bruce asked to distract her from the butler.

 

“Detective Samantha Clive,” she answered with another careful smile; eyes not quite meeting his and teeth deliberately hidden. An alpha projecting a safe non-threatening image in the company of an omega. “I transferred from Central City.”

 

He beckoned her over, removing her from where Alfred was listening in to Gordan and his lackey in the hallway. “You like Gotham?”

 

“It’s… very pretty,” she settled with.

 

“Pretty?”

 

“The buildings.”

 

“The buildings?” He prompted to keep her talking.

 

“The old Wayne tower is very nice,” she told him uncertainly as she sank into the spot Gordon had occupied opposite him. “I suppose you hear that all the time. It was your great-great-grandfather or something that built it, right?”

 

“You like our buildings,” he summarised, ignoring the question.

 

“Yes. They look older than I’m used to but they’re still really… beautiful.” Her scent shifted slightly as she said the word and she quickly looked away from him. “The buildings, I mean.”

 

“The buildings,” he echoed.

 

“Yes.”

 

Coolly. “I’m glad you’re admiring the view.”

 

She – Detective Samantha Clive – opened her mouth to say something, stopped, and quickly swallowed some tea. She coughed once as she came up for air and took another open mouthed swig. When she finished the piping hot cup she put it onto the table like an empty shot glass. Voice hoarse. “This is really good.” To Alfred. “How do you make this? Just the usual way? Can you…” her eyes flashed. “What are you…?”

 

Alfred moved away from the door with a natural fluidness, as if he’d just paused a moment to readjust his cufflinks, and approached Bruce to bend and mutter in his ear.

 

“Mr Black is imploring Commissioner Gordon to summon an ambulance and take you down to the station,” he said almost inaudibly. “He believes they need to show you this is serious; that you don’t really understand what will happen if you take the fall for Batman. He believes the commissioner needs to overlook his alpha instincts and treat you like anyone else.”

 

Detective Samantha Clive was frowning at them across the table. “Are you two…?”

 

Louder. “Thank you, Alfred. I think I’ll have the roast beef tonight.”

 

“Very good, sir.”

 

Alfred stepped back and busied himself dusting the spotless bookshelf behind him. Bruce levelled his stare on the detective, forcing her attention back onto him and then quickly down. It was rude in formal society for an alpha to lock eyes with an omega too long. He used that to his advantage. Kept her off balance by forcing her to think about where she was looking not what she was looking at. If he stared she would be forced to look aside.

 

“So,” she spoke uncertainly, looking back at her tea. “What’s it like being a billionaire?”

 

“With inflation being the way it is I imagine you’ll find out in a couple of years,” Bruce muttered.

 

She took a moment to process this. “I… oh…”

 

A loud growl sounded from the corridor. The male beta’s voice rang out. “Clive! We have a pack alpha out here!”

 

Jason’s voice. “Who the fuck are you?”

 

With a curse Bruce lurched onto his feet faster than the stunned woman opposite him and pushed out into the hallway. Sure enough Jason was in the hallway, hair a tangle of half formed curls, and scarred body exposed above a baggy pair of sweatpants. He would look terrifying even without the bruises across his knuckles, over his ribs, and consuming one side of his face. His eyes were locked onto the policemen, teeth visible, and stance ready. Responding instinctually to the assumed intruders in pack territory.

 

“Jackson,” Bruce deliberately emphasised the false name. “Stand down. They’re guests.”

 

The alpha’s gaze flicked to him and back to the officers. “They don’t look like guests.”

 

Gordon held up his hands as Black and Clive moved to flank him. “Easy, let’s not get excited. Mr Wayne and I were just having a discussion. We’re GCPD.”

 

Bruce saw the moment Jason recognised Gordon; his eyes flashed and feet shifted. “What’re the pigs doing here?”

 

The beta – Black – snorted. “Pigs? Here I was thinking we were in high society.”

 

“Easy,” Gordon said to his people this time. “Let’s not start something here.”

 

“This isn’t important right now,” Bruce told Jason. “I’m handling it. It’s okay.” He’d been hoping to take care of it without having to burden his pack. Not when they were already dealing with so much as it was. They already had to fight Leviathan, stop Talia, and save Damian. Those tasks – what was important right now – would be accomplished easier without being distracted by something as menial as this. “Go back to bed.”

 

“I’m not tired,” Jason said.

 

Deadly soft. “Go back to bed anyway.”

 

“Master Bruce,” Alfred cut in gently. “Perhaps it is better to explain the situation at this juncture.”

 

Bruce raked his fingers through his hair. At Jason. “What are you doing up?”

 

“I’m looking for Dick.”

 

“He went to bed before you. He’s in his room.”

 

“He’s not in his room,” Jason told him. “Why are you talking to cops?”

 

“I…” be looked at Gordon and back. “I’m confessing to a crime.”

 

The alpha’s eyes widened. “To _hell_ you are!”

 

“I’m handling it.”

 

Eyes narrow. “How are you handling it?”

 

“They’re not taking me away.”

 

The beta policeman spoke up. “Well, actually Mr Wayne we might take you downtown to—”

 

Jason. “Over my dead body!”

 

Gordon. “Now, hold on.”

 

“This isn’t important right now,” Bruce said again. “Of all the things that’s happened recently, of everything we’re going through, this doesn’t matter. Just go back to bed.”

 

“If I go to bed will you be here when I wake up?” Jason asked.

 

The question hung in the air like a scent.

 

Bruce looked to Gordon. He hated doing that. Hated turning to another – an alpha – to see his fate decided but it was the simplest way out of this situation. Either Gordon felt the need to prove he wasn’t bias for omegas and haul him down to the station until they posted bail or he would stay true to his original plan and give Bruce medical allowances, even if it looked like he was giving in to his alpha instinct.

 

He’d been hoping to keep this whole business secret from his pack. Let them sleep, give them energy, so they could help him tackle what really mattered; finding Damian and stopping Talia. Now that Jason knew, the best thing to do was to solve this issue as quickly as possible.

 

“What’s it going to be, Jim?”

 

“Mr Wayne I…”

 

“I know what I’m doing,” Bruce said, remembering what Alfred had told him. “I know this is serious.”

 

Gordon sighed and gestured back towards the study. “Let’s do this like civilised people then, yes?”

 

Bruce nodded, sent a long look around his gathered pack, and stepped back into the study. This time Gordon made sure the door latched. Before it closed he saw Alfred put a comforting hand on Jason’s shoulder.

 

“That’s Dick’s fiancé?” Gordon asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Huh.” The alpha grunted.

 

“You have an opinion you want to share?” Bruce rumbled, voice deeper than intended.

 

“He’s not what I expected," the commissioner admitted. "Barbara’s told me about him. She says he’s handsome. It’s hard to tell under those bruises.” There was a judgement in there. Or perhaps a warning.

 

“If my mate is the person you think,” Bruce said over his shoulder. “You can trust that no criminal will be let into this house.”

 

“If Batman is your mate, Mr Wayne, then my respect for him has plummeted. What kind of alpha lets their pregnant mate take the fall?”

 

Bruce sat down and gathered his abandoned blanket back over his shoulders. “If you’re hoping he’s listening in don’t bother. And, believe it or not, I am not taking the fall for anyone.” Bruce sent the man a frank look. “The reason you could trace the hack back to me was because I did it. When the robots return you’ll find their last command priority was looking for Damian Wayne.” Voice thin. “That is what they’re doing now and I’m not giving them back until I’ve got my boy.”

 

Gordon lifted an eyebrow. “And the rumours that Superman was in the vicinity?”

 

“I don’t know anything about that.” It was his first true lie of the day.

 

“Mr Wayne,” Gordon’s voice was soft but powerful; a pack leader in his own right. “You know there is a chance you could do time for this. A real chance.”

 

Bruce didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. “Yes.”

 

The alpha sighed and slumped back down into the seat opposite Bruce to pick up his still steaming tea. “Very well. This is what’s going to happen then. I’m going to get a recording of your confession, charge you with grand theft, and you’re staying here, under house arrest. Because you have the means and the motive to disappear we’ll have someone drop by shortly and give you a GPS anklet, unless you would rather have your accounts frozen?”

 

“The anklet,” Bruce decided readily.

 

“Good.”

 

“Can I include Gotham General in my house arrest?”

 

In surprise. “The hospital?”

 

“Yes. My doctor tells me I’m not allowed to birth a preterm baby at home.”

 

“Ah. Of course,” the man shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yes, you can. I’ll make sure that’s included.” A long pause. “I must say, Mr Wayne; you’re a lot more reasonable than I thought you would be given the accusation.”

 

“You thought I would be unreasonable?”

 

Gordon shrugged. “To be fair; you have a reputation. I’ve seen you be - what some would call - unreasonable at charity balls, community events, and private parties.”

 

“I don’t have the energy to waste being unreasonable right now,” he told the man honestly.

 

Quietly. “I can understand that.”

 

And that was it. Their deal was struck.

 

He knew it would happen. He knew the moment he commanded the robots to the dockyard what it would mean pulling them from the company before the Batman Inc. contract was finalised. But it was a price he was willing to pay to save his mate and to attempt to save his son. It was a price he would gladly pay again and again… even if, against his calculations, it ended up giving him jail time. That too was something he was willing to pay if it meant putting his pack back together.

 

His only regret was the timing.

 

He rubbed at the quietly wriggling thing in his belly. _It’s okay pup. We’ll figure this out. If I have to go away for a bit we’ll figure that out too. I’ll come back for you. I’ll always come back for you._

 

By the time Gordon and his lackeys left the Alfred was standing quietly beside Jason in the hallway and the alpha was looking at him like he’d just stabbed him in the back.

 

“It’s okay,” he lied. “I can stay.”

 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jason snarled, teeth flashing. “You’re the pack leader. You can’t just… throw yourself under a fucking bus! We need you!” Eyes black with betrayal. “Say someone else did it. Say I did it.”

 

“I know how you feel Jason, and I truly wish there was a better way,” Alfred said sagely. “But, right now, I cannot see it.”

 

Jason. “Say _I_ did it!”

 

“No,” Bruce said simply. “You’re an alpha. Alphas are more than five times more likely to go to jail for committing the same crime as an omega… and my motive is better.” Quieter. “Besides, we don’t want anyone looking too close at Jackson Billing’s paperwork.”

 

“You’re the pack leader,” Jason snarled. “You can’t do this. We can’t lose you.”

 

Alfred looked pale. “Master Bruce I think…”

 

“Where’s Dick?” He interrupted him, not willing to dwell on the arrest. “Did he go get food?”

 

“No sir, he wasn’t in the kitchen.”

 

“Find him,” Bruce muttered. “I don’t want anyone unaccounted for right now.”

 

He turned and walked back into the study. He would have to come back upstairs when the police returned but, for now, he unlocked the passage behind the grandfather clock and made his way back down into the cave. The temperature dropped as he descended and walked between rows of batsuits then warmed up again as he approached the working solar bed.

 

Clark was still lying across it, Martha was at his side – within the light of the lamps and already looking browner for it – and chewing her lip as she gazed down at her son. Clark had regained his colour, was breathing deep and regularly, but still would not be stirred into consciousness.

 

“Bruce,” the woman saw him coming. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

 

He stopped where he was, still out in the cave outside the medical wing and slowly turned his head to look at the line of batsuits. Empty cowls glared out at him under black pronged crowns, capes fell over armoured shoulders, and belts hang for easy useability beside them. In amongst them one of the display cases was open, one of the suits missing.

 

_Oh Dick._

 

Jason came down the stairs two at a time. “He’s not with Tim or in the study. Is he down here?”

 

“No,” Bruce answered. “Computer. Access batbots. Batman Inc. Zero four seven two five nine five zero two one eight one.”

 

_“Accessed.”_

 

Jason frowned, confused. “What are you doing? I thought we were looking for Dick?”

 

He looked at the alpha squarely, honestly. “Command priority two; find and rescue Batman.”

 

Jason’s face slacked in a wash of horror. “No. No he’s here. We just have to…” he saw the missing suit. “No. This is… this isn’t… no. Fuck you! No! He wouldn’t just… go. He wouldn’t just… he wouldn’t! He’s _Dick_! He wouldn’t disobey you like that! He’s… No, no, fuck, no…” the alpha raked his fingers through his hair, knots pulling tangled strands out across his knuckles. “No, fuck, no, no, no, no…”

 

Without thinking about what he was doing Bruce wrapped an arm around Jason’s shoulders and pulled him against him in a heavy hug.

 

_Oh Dick._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it!
> 
> I am going outback for a few days for work shortly and I don't know what the internet situation is going to be/how much free time I'm going to get. Because of that any responses to comments on my part MAY take a while. Or they may take no time at all. I really don't know. Please don't let that discourage you from leaving a comment however. I really do love hearing from you guys and it really picks me up to be able to chat to you. :)


	16. Chapter 16

Damian hid.

 

It was cowardly, but it was the only course of action his fear mangled brain could conceive. He’d lost his sword, he’d lost his mind, and so he did what he’d been trained to do and fled underground – out of sight – to regroup. To make some sense out of the phantom that had saved him and the sword stroke that should have killed him.

 

_Clark…_

_He was…_

_Alive?_

 

He had to get back to the manor. He needed to get back home. That was what Kent – or his dream version of Kent – had told him to do. But every breath hurt, none of the city looked familiar, and robots the size of cars were patrolling the sky. So in a mindless fit of panic he dropped down a manhole cover and fled.

 

Gotham sat above enough underground electrical tunnels, old sewers, and railway lines that it was a miracle the city didn’t sink. The tangled web of sub terrain passages were extensive and no one knew the map in its entirety. Not even his father. Still, they were not unknown to the general population. He passed walls of graffiti, homeless sleeping under buzzing electrical cables, and a couple of gang members who didn’t look at him twice.

 

Once he was deep enough, and it was dark enough, he curled up in a dry spot and concentrated on breathing. His lung was damaged. He could _feel_ the damage every time he inhaled. But he could breathe. It hurt, but he could breathe. For now.

 

He tried to let that fact comfort him as he hugged his knees to his chest and _shook_. An unstoppable motion that came with a montage of memories on constant loop. His father’s mate lying dead on a table, his mother telling him he was a low level omega, his brother stabbing him… and the burn as a bitter sweet moment of madness put his chest back together around his damaged lung.

 

_Alive._

_Clark was alive._

_It was impossible but it was true._

 

An unexplainable and irrational sob escaped his throat, the motion sending a warning throb of agony from his chest.

 

He could go home. He _had_ to go home. He had to explain everything to father. He had to say sorry. If he did that he could be part of the pack again. Grayson would try to make him eat cereal, Drake would call him a name, Pennyworth would put berries in his lunchbox, and father would put a warm – almost hesitant – hand on his shoulder before he left for patrol.

 

_Pack._

 

He tried to stand, tried to spur his body onto the journey home, but everything hurt and suddenly he was very tired. Despite everything he’d somehow fulfilled his mission; he’d saved his father’s mate. He didn’t know how he’d done it but he had. He didn’t know how he’d lived, how Clark had risen, or what was happening on the city above him. But, for perhaps the first time, he didn’t care. He’d done it. He’d saved Clark.

 

Now he just had to get home.

 

Tomorrow. He’d get home tomorrow.

 

Just then he needed to rest. To just close his eyes and…

 

“Hey!”

 

Damian jumped awake and grabbed at the space around him; searching for a weapon. Finding none he clenched his fists and showed his teeth; a clumsy imitation of adulthood. Slowly his brain caught up.

 

He was hunched in a dark nook in an abandoned train tunnel – body shaking, stiff, and useless – and someone was with him. Through the darkness he could make out the shoulders of the figure that had woken him. It was male and for a moment…

 

“Grayson?” He croaked.

 

“Huh?” His companion shifted and Damian got a better look at him through the gloom. He was a boy, orange haired, and bony enough he could see the shape of his collarbone. Despite the cold he was lightly dressed in clothes that smelt like they hadn’t been changed for a while. A lightly specked brow wrinkled in confusion. “What’s a Grayson?”

 

“Who are you?” Damian demanded, hugging his side.

 

The boy flinched back into the shadow. “S-sorry. I-I just saw you sleeping and I thought you were one of us… then I was up close and you looked hurt is all. You’re alone.”

 

Through his teeth. “So?”

 

“So the jabbers will get you,” the boy told him. “You can’t be alone.”

 

“You’re alone.”

 

“Yeah…” the boy managed to curl his gangly limbs to his chest to fit into the nook across from Damian. “I was with my pack but those robots circled us. They’ve been doing that. Trying to get kids, we think. So we split.” Miserably. “I hate it when we split. We can’t always find everyone again.”

 

Damian glared at the shadow. “Your pack are kids?”

 

Hesitantly. “Yeah…”

 

“All of them?”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“You’re a puppy pack.” He’d read about puppy packs. Packs entirely made up of people prior to presenting. They were rare in the extreme; every member effectively having to be orphaned from their old pack or abandoned by them and separated either through distance or mistrust from adults. He’d heard there were a few on the streets of Gotham but he hadn’t really believed it.

 

“I… I guess…” the boy fidgeted. “Jackie doesn’t like people calling us puppies. She says they call us that cause they don’t know shit. Puppies don’t got teeth. We got teeth. We can bite.” He didn’t sound so sure of the assessment and looked around the concrete nook. “Can I stay here a while? I-I can’t find anyone. I think I went the wrong way…” there was a raw note of panic in his voice like he truly feared being alone. “Is that okay?”

 

“What?”

 

“S-staying with you for a bit. I mean I-I don’t like the dark much but…” bony limbs shifted into a more comfortable arrangement. “Is that okay?”

 

Damian didn’t say anything.

 

“I’m Colin,” the boy spoke after a pause.

 

“I’m Robin,” Damian said without thinking. The moment the damning name was through his lips he wished he could bottle it back down. Numbly a part of him realised how tired, sick, and hurt he must be to make such a simple error. He’d just unveiled his secret identity unmasked to a complete stra—

 

“Like Robin Hood?” the boy asked eagerly. “I love Robin Hood. I had a Robin Hood movie when I was little.”

 

In disbelief. “Robin Hood?”

 

“Yeah. That’s who Robin – Batman and Robin’s Robin – is based on. I read it in an old interview once.”

 

Damian shook his head. “No, it’s a bird.”

 

“No,” the boy insisted. “It’s Robin Hood. That’s why he wears those colours. No bird robin is those colours. They’re colours like Robin Hood used to wear in that old TV show. The one where everyone was angry because Maid Marion was a beta.”

 

Damian opened his mouth to protest, stopped, and gazed into the darkness. “That’s one of Grayson’s favourite shows,” he rasped.

 

_“Tt. You just like it because the alpha’s drooling over a beta, Grayson.”_

_“Hey, that’s not true. I liked this since I was a kid. I used to watch it in the circus.”_

 

“I never saw it,” the boy – Colin – said. “I just read about it in the Robin interview.”

 

“Huh…” Damian looked down, digesting this estranged information, and rubbed his face with the heels of his palms. His skin was hot and tight, lips chapped, and body badly bruised. The fresh burn on his chest hurt as it rubbed against the torn fabric of his clothes and the sore on his back felt open… raw. None of it compared to the tight lopsided ring of fire wrapped around his chest. He was used to pain but this… this was wearing pain, pain with no relief. Pain he didn’t know when he’d be able to see gone. He hated it. He wanted to just close his eyes and escape it. Sleep despite the numbing cold of the cement around him and the part of his lung he could feel.

 

The boy, whoever he was, distracted him from the pain.

 

Despite himself he relished the company. The boy that smelt like Gotham, sweat, and had a scent that reminded him of a freshly struck match; still undefined but interesting, sharp, and oddly friendly.

 

“You like Robin?” He croaked.

 

“I…” the boy shifted. “I like superheroes. They’re cool, right? Robin’s the coolest. Or, he was. I don’t know if I like the new Robin. He seems mean.”

 

“Not everyo—!” he began angrily. The sudden intake of air sent a fresh shock of pain through him and silenced him with a gasp. Whatever Clark had done he hadn’t done it well. Breathing was still an acute kind of agony and there was no way he could take in a full lungful of air. With a lurch he realised he might not be saved from death yet, just detained. He was unnaturally tired, sore, and breathing was a labour that worsened with every intake of air.

 

Colin. “Are you okay?”

 

A raw touch of honesty. “I think I’m dying.”

 

“Dying?” Somehow through the darkness the boy looked terrified. “What’s wrong? Do you need some stuff? I-I don’t know where to get any stuff anymore. I used to get the V stuff b-but that was a long time ago and I never really wanted it.”

 

“I need to go…” a slow breath. “…home.”

 

 In surprise. “You have a home?”

 

“Yes. I have a home.” The sentence tasted strange and sweet on his lips. “I have that.”

 

Colin didn’t move. “Oh.”

 

“How do I get out of here?” Damian asked.

 

“I-I can show you.”

 

He nodded. He needed to keep moving. However long he’d been asleep it was enough. He couldn’t close his eyes again.

 

Going was slow. It was cold, his limbs were stiff, and body a catalogue of different kinds of pains. On top of that Colin seemed to jump at his own shadow and hung uncomfortably close. The other boy, he discovered with some satisfaction, was the same height as him, had hair like Drake – too long and unkempt but his apparent homelessness excused it – and had shoes held together with tape. As they approached sunlight he was also surprised to see the frightened boy also had bruises along his knuckles.

 

Despite the apparent violence of that he was gentle when he held Damian’s hand to lead him through the rabbit warren of tunnels until they came to a ladder crudely cut into the wall. It was a long climb and on it Damian discovered that the smallest finger on his left hand was broken. Strange that he hadn’t noticed that before… even now it didn’t really hurt much.

 

“Where are we?” He asked as they clambered up a landing that tumbled out into a storm water drain. It was flowing and he noticed it was raining through a street side grate above him. It had been sunny that morning.

 

“Crime Alley,” the boy answered as he grabbed hold of a hanging rope and wriggled up to the grate above them.

 

Damian followed, slow, until they pushed through the grate and crawled up to ground level. The rain was icy, wind penetrating, and the oily street turned the water flowing over him a gritty grey. He wrinkled his nose against the stench and limped under the nearest gutter, clothes already soaked down one side. Colin appeared beside him with a trash bag huddled around him like a raincoat.

 

“What time is it?” Damian asked.

 

“Not arvo.”

 

“What?”

 

“Eh…” The red head went an extraordinary colour when he blushed. “Afternoon. It’s not the afternoon yet. Noon I guess. T-there is a school near here. I-If we go look and they’re on lunch or not.”

 

“Noon,” he echoed. He’d run from the battle that morning. At sunrise. It had been at least five hours. He must have slept for most of that. But then why did he still feel so tired?

 

“Do you know the way home from here?”

 

“Yes,” he muttered. “But it’s a long way. I need a car.”

 

“I don’t have a car.”

 

“I can drive,” Damian said. “If we can find a car then I can drive.”

 

Again. “I don’t have a car.”

 

Angry. “That’s why I said _find_ one. I thought you said you weren’t a puppy.”

 

The boy bowed his head. “I… I don’t know how to find a car.”

 

“They’re everywhere!” Damian forced himself to step out into the street. “We just need to find a parked one. I can hotwire it.” He couldn’t. He’d never been able to hotwire but he’d seen Todd do it a couple of times. It may be hopeless but he needed to do something and this was the only plan he had.

 

“Okay,” Colin moved in beside him and – without permission or apology – extended the trash bag to cover Damian as well. “We’ll find one.”

 

They found one. More than one. There were a lot of cars in Gotham and a lot of them left out in the open. But none had their keys in them and, it quickly became obvious he didn’t in fact know how to hotwire a car. Colin never said a word about his obvious lie, kept the rain off him with their shared trash bag, and kept pointing out and new cars they passed. When the rain got heavier Colin led him to a rundown apartment block and knocked nine times in tune on a bottom floor window.

 

“Where are we?”

 

“The lady that lives here feeds us sometimes,” Colin told him. “But only when her mate’s not home.”

 

The window opened and an older woman than Damian expected leaned out. She wore conservative sleep clothes, had pushed back wild curls of hair with a simple hairband, and the bite mark on her neck stood out strangely against her dark skin.

 

“Collie,” she recognised him. “Where are the others? Who’s this?”

 

“His name’s Robin.”

 

With a sad look in her eye. “What happened to you Robbie?”

 

“I’m fine,” he snarled.

 

“Oh, I know. I know you lot don’t like grownups,” she said softly. “But I’m good. I won’t tell no one you were here.”

 

“Why not?” He asked sharply.

 

She frowned. “What?”

 

“I’m homeless,” he named her assumption. “I’m underage. Why not call someone?”

 

“Who knows who would come to get you and where they’d put you,” she said with a shake of her head. “They might put you with bond breakers or gays. I’ve seen them at the adoption offices.” She handed a pizza box out the window. “Or maybe they’d just leave some place that hurts you. Like Collie here.”

 

Damian’s head snapped around to stare at the other boy. “What?”

 

He blushed. “T-thanks,” he accepted the pizza. “I’ll…”

 

“What did you mean?” Damian interrupted, talking to the woman.

 

“I think you two should talk about that.”

 

“See you,” Colin said quickly and grabbed Damian by the sleeve, dragging him away.

 

The woman nodded. “You take care, Collie. You too Rob.” The window closed.

 

“What did she mean?” Damian hissed.

 

“Nothing. It’s no big deal,” the boy walked along the street until he curled up under the eaves of what looked like an abandoned butcher shop. “I can take care of myself now, if things get too rough.” He held up the pizza box. “Hungry?”

 

“I don’t want to eat what she gave us,” Damian said stiffly, still cradling his side. “She would rather we be homeless than in foster care with bond breakers.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“That’s what she said!”

 

“That’s what a lot of people say,” the boy muttered as he opened the box.  Inside was three slices of cold pizza and half a loaf of garlic bread wrapped in foil. “I think she just likes being important to us. Or kind of important.” He looked up. “Her mate doesn’t want kids. I think she does. If she tells the police about us she won’t have kids coming to her window anymore.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

 

“It doesn’t matter?!”

 

“She gives us food and leaves us alone,” Colin said. “That’s all that matters.” He blushed again. “Everyone else tries to grab us, or get the police to grab us. I like this better.” He picked up a slice of pizza and offered it. “You sure you don’t want none?”

 

“No,” Damian said. He doubted he could stomach anything just then. “I can’t believe you would talk to her.”

 

Shyly. “Me neither. Most adults I can’t talk to at all. I just… freeze.” He bit the pizza. “But I can talk to her.”

 

Halfway through the meagre meal a little girl – no older than seven – slunk out from behind a dumpster and sat down beside them. She nuzzled Colin in a universal gesture – pack mates – and without a word started eating the food. Over the next couple of hours they bumped into other children. Each one melted into their party. Some looked at Damian strangely, others suspiciously, but no one seemed to really object to his presence. Adults seemed to be the enemy in their strange existence and they avoided them when possible. When one man tried to approach they threw rocks.

 

Damian followed them around, not aware enough to truly make sense of the surreal situation. Not quite with it enough to work out how he could make it back to the manor at that moment.

 

Soon, he decided as the children poured into a stairwell – a dry place – and curled up to sleep. The floor was about as forgiving as the underground tunnel had been but this time when he lay down warm bodies curled around him. Clearly this was how this strange pack slept; all bundled together, wet clothes shamelessly shed, and body heat shared. There was something comforting in it.

 

Something that made him think perhaps if he closed his eyes now he would wake.

 

That despite his laboured breathing, open wounds, and the icy drops of rain – or was that sweat? – settling on his skin with these children he would be okay. Just for a moment. Just for…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, FYI I added a bit of a story list to the INDEX for those looking for some extra reading in this AU: [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2738015/chapters/8692039) . It was a bit hard to find everything not linked up in this series so I just thought I would make it easier if anyone was interested. Thanks again to the wonderful authors that wrote those stories. :)


	17. Chapter 17

Dick had never been much good at compartmentalising. That was Bruce’s speciality. Bruce could ground a teenage Dick and yet still demand full attendance, obedience, and enthusiasm from him in his role as Robin that very same night. He could – seemingly without effort – sort and filter his responsibilities into the Batman, Bruce, and Bruce Wayne personas. He could take care of his mate and wait for the time, the information, and the opportunity to rescue Damian.

 

Dick couldn’t.

 

He couldn’t sit and wait. He couldn’t ignore the fact that Damian was missing. He couldn’t lie in bed – or on a hospital floor – for another night and pretend everything was okay. Not anymore. Worst of all, he couldn’t compartmentalise away everything else that was bombarding his brain. The niggling ache of instinct that told him he’d failed to care for Tim in the way a beta should, the sickening barb of bitter black anger that bubbled up whenever he thought of Jason, and the wrenching knowledge that it was all his fault.

 

He’d lost Damian. He’d upset Tim. He’d made Jason so unsure of him that the man would rather lie to him than risk upsetting him. Jason would rather look at him, lose his knot, and marry him with rings he’d put false meaning on than talk to him about this wedding.

 

This wedding that was already killing him because, he realised, no matter how he looked at it now it didn’t feel like _their_ wedding. He’d taken himself out of the equation trying to make room for Jason – room the alpha had failed to fill – and now he was left with something that didn’t feel like it should. But he still would have loved it. He would have loved it because it was him, Jason, and the rings were evidence enough that Jason cared enough to try. Now he didn’t even have that. Jason hadn’t even tried.

 

With that knowledge came a bitter realisation: he needed more.

 

He knew he was being unfair. He knew he was pushing Jason to do something he clearly didn’t have an inkling towards. He knew he was asking for something the alpha wouldn’t need returned.  But he needed more romantic maintenance than Jason was giving him. It was selfish, needy, and unattractive in every way… but there it was.

 

Kori had called him high maintenance once. In many way, back then, he had been. He’d always liked attention, he’d always liked being loved, and he’d insisted on the accessories to that emotion; semi-jokingly semi-seriously. That was who he was. That was how he liked his relationships. Chocolates, alcohol, and late night texts. The stupider the better.

 

Like that pear.

 

That dumb, perfect, pear that Tim had accepted without thinking. A simple token of affection that Conner had obviously thought about and Tim understood without a word ever having to pass between them. Tim hadn’t told Conner to get it, Conner hadn’t needed to be told. He loved Tim, he was sorry, and so he acted.

 

That fucking pear.

 

It was a fruit with a funny story. That was all it was. But, despite it, that pear outshone his wedding rings at every angle.

 

Dick gritted his teeth.

 

When had he stopped expecting things like that? How many years with Jason had it taken to slowly wear down his expectations? To turn him from the high maintenance boy Kori dated to the man whose romantic expectations were blown sky high when his partner bought him some rings at his request… only to come crashing down to earth when it turned out, actually, he hadn’t. How was it that shy, no-nonsense, Tim had managed to end up in a more romantic relationship than him? How was it that Bruce – _Bruce_ – had managed it as well? Because he had. The kiss he’d planted on an unconscious Clark was a glowing testament to that.

 

He slipped.

 

Dick heard himself gasp as the rain soaked rooftop rose up to meet him with frightening speed. Then he fell. Tumbling down the side of a steep gothic spire like a bird with broken wings.

 

Icy rain water found its way into his suit, the scrape of the building was hard enough he knew he’d bruise, and his fingers were stiff and clumsy around the haft of the grapple gun. But he did – somehow among it all – seize and fire the tool. The grapple caught on something by sheer luck and for a moment Dick hung, just over a gargoyle spattered gutter.

 

“F-fuck.”

 

A whir.

 

Dick scrambled back up over the precipice, hugged his cape around him, and ducked behind a grinning gargoyle as a bat-themed robot swooped through the street below. It was scanning the road; still hunting him under the assumption he wouldn’t be hiding but traveling fast down the main roads. Pretty soon they’d catch on, maybe even find his abandoned bike, and begin tracking his route across the rooftops. They would be able to too. The thundering rain, his lack of sleep, or perhaps the mess of ugly thoughts clashing together like cymbals in his head had made him sloppy. He’d left a trail of ropes, chipped buildings, and – somewhere – even a bit of his cape.

 

He just needed to make it one more block to the dockyards. Once there he could check for evidence, find Damian’s trail, and escape the hot-spot Bruce’s metallic men were patrolling. One more block. He’d be there already if Bruce hadn’t discovered his absence so soon and set the robots on him.

 

Once the robot was around the block he jumped, unfurled his cape for a quick glide through the sheet of rain, and landed on the next roof.

 

One more block. He just needed to concentrate for one more block; to think about where he was putting his hands and feet in this water washed wasteland of buildings and not get lost in his own brain with thoughts of Damian, Jason, or anything else.

 

It took almost ten minutes. But he made it.

 

He arrived at the dockyard, slipped down from the rooftops, and waded out towards where police tape had roped off the street side. Random officers lurked under massive coats, a man that looked like a groundskeeper was shackling the surviving man-bats too crippled to fly away, and a forensics team were smoking under shelter; satisfied all evidence was well and truly washed away.

 

The weather had kept away any bystanders and anchored all the fishing ships and only two policemen were still out in the rain working.

 

One of them jumped as he spotted him and grabbed his partner’s arm.

 

“Hey, look, Bats is here.”

 

“Bats? Bullshit it’s— holy fuck!” The second policeman gaped at him from under the hood of his raincoat.

 

It was only through the advanced auditory sensors in the cowl that Dick could hear their exchange.

 

“Shouldn’t we…?”

 

“Nah. Nah, we can’t. He’s deputised.”

 

A snort. “Again?”

 

“Yeah. Batman Inc. Don’t you watch the news?” The man’s voice dropped further. “He’s in bed with Bruce Wayne. Literally, my mate says.”

 

His partner made less effort to lower his voice. “Everyone’s in bed with Bruce Wayne. Pretty soon _I’ll_ bein bed with Bruce Wayne. And I’ll bet you it’ll be three months before we’re hunting ol’ Bats again.”

 

“Three months? I bet two. Nah, fuck that. Watch him. He’ll commit a crime now.”

 

They both flashed him toothy grins as he turned his back, and crouched down to look hopelessly at the mucky rain flooding over the pavement. There was no way even Tim could track any kind of scent through this. He would be lucky to even find a blood stain, let alone one the police hadn’t already contaminated. If this place had been a point in the trail the markers were now gone.

 

He looked up, scanning the street mouths and trying to guess – if he were Damian – which one he would take. It was hopeless. There was no way to tell which direction he might have gone or why. Was he heading home? Was he avoiding detection? Was he simply fleeing? All questions that were pinned on the wild assumption that Damian had actually been here in the first place; something they couldn’t confirm or deny until Clark opened his eyes.

 

“Fuck,” he hissed. “ _Fuck_.”

 

Damian _had_ to have been here. There _had_ to be some clue. There had to be _something_.

 

“Eh, Bats?!”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

The officer called again. “That thing one of yours?”

 

Dick looked up. Froze.

 

One of the batbots was hovering nearby, rain steaming off its exhaust, as it scanned him.

 

He didn’t know how Bruce had discovered his absence so soon; if the missing suit had given him away or it was something else. Regardless, he wasn’t ready to go back yet. He wasn’t ready to face the pack, to face Jason, and – above all – spend another day sleeping when Damian was still missing in action. He couldn’t. He couldn’t go back.

 

“Back off,” he growled at the robot. “Remote access Batman Inc. Zero two one one five nine four nine two one eight four.”

 

The machine moved to pick him up.

 

“I said back off! Remote access Batman Inc. Zero two one on—” he broke off as another robot descended from the sky behind him, almost apologetically boxing him in. “You bastard. I’m not done here!”

 

No response.

 

He didn’t know why he expected one.

 

They two machines moved in. He hit a button on the belt.

 

It was an old trick. But it still worked.

 

The robots crashed to the ground, temporarily robbed of their power by the short range EMP he’d just activated. It wasn’t a lasting solution. They would be up again shortly and before they were the other robots would register their lack on the grid, interpret the last signals they were sending, and flood his direction to deal with the threat and ‘save’ him.

 

“Hey!” One of the police officers called out triumphantly. “Are you leaving those there? Is he leaving those there? That’s littering, right? What did I tell ya! That’s a crime! That’s a crime Batman!”

 

Dick did his best not to show the man his middle finger as he strode through the wet down the pavement back towards Gotham. He was half way before he noticed a rough marker had been taped onto the ground.

 

“What’s this?”

 

One of the officers approached. “What? Oh eh, there was a body but it started raining so we packed it up. Chalk outline doesn’t work when the cement turns to the bottom of the fucking ocean.”

 

A sickening pang of dread. “What sort of body?”

 

The man gave him a strange look. “A dead one, Batman.”

 

“What sort?! Male?! Female?! Old?! Young?!”

 

The man held up his hands and staggered back a step. “Whoa. Sorry Bats. Keep your lid on. It was a guy. Late twenties early thirties. Most of him anyway.”

 

His relief tampered. “Most of him?”

 

“Yeah, we figured it was actually two bodies. See, it was really a headless body and a head. The body belonged to the guy and the head looked like some kid.”

 

Dick’s stomach plummeted. “Kid?”

 

“Boy. Ten-ish.”

 

“Ten-ish…” Dick heard himself echo dumbly.

 

“Yeah. ‘Bout there. It’ was pretty well paired up though. The head and the body. Whoever put them together has to have thought about it.” He popped a soaking cigarette between his teeth. “I’m telling ya, Bats; I used to work the freak beat a couple of years back. The one that cuts through all the big guys’ territory. Penguin. Black Mask. Commish says you see it all doing that run. Bodies like the kind Croc and Joker leave behind, you know. _Messed_ up. But Gotham, by God, she keeps on giving.” Groped in his pockets for a light. “What do you think? New villain? Gets kids and grown-ups and plays jigsaw? What’ll we call ‘em?”

 

Dick ignored him, wrestled the grapple from his belt, and fired.

 

A head. A severed head. A severed head that belonged to a ten year old boy. _Please God no…_

It took him just under half an hour to make it to the GCPD and wriggle down an old ventilation shaft to the morgue. It was a place he visited with Bruce a lot as a teenager. The morbid underground space had become oddly familiar since then. A place where they looked for clues within the safety of the police buildings. Now he felt like he was walking into one of Joker’s death traps.

 

Body lockers lined the walls, computers displayed disjointedly cheerful screen savers, and a woman was chewing on a donut in the corner. She stared at him slack jawed as he unapologetically moved towards a large mental table and the body sprawled across it.

 

Adult. Male. Covered with surgical marks.

 

“Where is the head?”

 

“B-Batman?”

 

“The head.”

 

The woman put down her donut. “The head that came with this body wasn’t attached and clearly didn’t belong. It wasn’t the same person than…”

 

A word at a time. “Where. Is. The. Head?”

 

She extended a shaking arm to point across the room.

 

He spun, marched in the direction she indicated, and stopped when he saw him.

 

The next thing he knew he was leaning against the wall trying not to throw up.

 

No. No no no no _no no NO!_

 

“Batman?”

 

Fuck you. _Fuck you!_ This isn’t how this goes. This isn’t right! This isn’t Damian!

 

“Batman?”

 

“Go away!”

 

The woman staggered back, face white.

 

_Had to be some… had to be wrong… had to be…_

 

He thought of Jason. Blindly, desperately. A hopeless reach to try and yank his brain away from what he’d just seen.

 

Why had he lied to him? Why had it hurt him so much? Why couldn’t Dick be happy with what he had? Why couldn’t Jason just… _try_? He, unlike Bruce and perhaps Tim, would prefer to get something he didn’t like over nothing at all. And it wasn’t just the rings… it was everything. Jason hadn’t made any effort to be a part of their wedding, what little he’d done it had been following Dick’s direct instructions, and this wasn’t strange when it came to their relationship. Would Jason have even asked him out if he hadn’t made it obvious with Roy what he wanted from a sexual partner? Would he even have seen him as a sexual partner if Dick hadn’t yelled it in his face? Would he have told Dick he loved him if Dick hadn’t put him in a situation which forced those words from his lips?

 

The wedding was the once divergence from that. Jason had asked him to marry him without any prompting… and so he’d thought… he’d dared to hope… and it hurt realising that what he’d hoped he would see from Jason wasn’t the case.

 

He swallowed.

 

Slowly he turned back to the severed head. Forced himself to look. To study. To comprehend.

 

It was Damian. Skin turned an eerie porcelain in death, features slack, and eyes closed in a way that suggested it happened post-mortem. He didn’t need to get any closer to know the fatal blow had been by a sword. He’d seen Damian behead people before. He knew how the process worked. He knew what it looked like… and he knew who taught him how to do that.

 

Talia al-Ghul.

 

The person Bruce had already identified as being Leviathan, the person Damian would run off to either join or confront, and the person who’d already proved she was capable of monstrosities toward her own children. The person who had done this – all this – to his pack. The person who had killed his little brother.

 

“He,” he croaked, “is one of ours.”

 

The woman standing terrified at the other side of the room shifted from foot to foot. “One of yours?”

 

“He’s one of ours,” Dick echoed and forced himself to nod at Damian. “Batman Inc.”

 

Her eyes widened. “I… the head or the…?”

 

“All of it! Just… send him to Wayne Enterprises.”

 

“But…”

 

He was already walking back towards the vents. “I have a job to do.”

 

It was a quarter of a mile to the nearest safe house, the rain was petering away from monsoonal downpour, and the robots seemed to be swarming near the shorefront; safely away from his route. Despite it, it was the hardest trip he’d ever made. He couldn’t think. He could hardly breathe. Yet somehow he did. Somehow he continued. Somehow it all kept moving forward.

 

Just like that day Jason died.

 

He made it to the rundown building, shed his abused batsuit, and began dressing in the armour he found there. Not the cape and cowl. Not this time. Those robots were looking for Batman? Fine. Let them look. Let them keep looking and ignore Nightwing right under their noses.

 

He pulled the old costume on, spun his escrima sticks around his hands once before snapping them into place, and began adding equipment. A lightweight grapple, a series of different types of baterangs, sleeping darts, a gasmask, some explosive gel, and a basic disrupter. He left anything that might make a signal; anything Bruce could track.

 

When he was ready he walked towards the door. Stopped.

 

Without thinking about what he was doing he turned around, moved over to the part of the armoury dedicated to Red Hood, and grabbed the first set of twin holsters he saw. It was heavy as he fastened it to his hips. The two guns in it fully loaded, equipped with silencers, and packed in with extra bullets. At the back it had room for one of Jason’s signature knife. He added a smaller substitute from the rack.

 

Grimly he conceded to himself that the reason he was changing costumes wasn’t just to avoid the robots. He needed to be Nightwing. He respected Bruce too much to stay in the Batman persona from here on out. He needed to be Nightwing because he would rather destroy himself than the idea Bruce had created. He needed to because…

 

…because Batman didn’t kill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! I'm in my last couple of weeks of study for this semester now and things are really starting to get busy. Plus the first draft of this was so atrocious I had to just delete and start from scratch. I hope you like it and thanks so much for all your support thus far! It's been amazing hearing from all of you and it really helps just to be able to see what you think and chat. I'm overwhelmed with the love. <3


	18. Chapter 18

The house was cold when he woke.

 

Cold and dark.

 

Kon grimaced. He’d only been in Wayne Manor for a week and already he was sleeping like the bats. He didn’t like it. He didn't like any of it. He didn’t like the creepy old house, the starless night skies, or the strange small feeling that prickled in his gut knowing the pack didn’t like him. Not anymore. Not since he humiliated himself trying to defeat Jason. Not since he'd hurt a pack member. Not since Bruce had put him on his knees. Not since he'd messed everything up just following that tight bitter feeling at the base of his throat that told him Jason was the oppressive alpha power... and he the fresh new challenger.

 

_Idiot. Stupid fucking idiot._

 

He buried himself in his blankets and tried to retreat back into the oblivion of sleep. To forget about the way the pack looked at him, the way Tim didn’t look at him, and the man he would usually go to with these sort of problems lying prone and unconscious in the cave below him. He wished he could go back to the way life was before. He wished he could go back to Smallville, be awake during the day, and invite Tim over to drink hot chocolate and kiss in the snow.

 

Even more than sex… he was missing kissing Tim.

 

He closed his eyes and thought about the omega, the soft sweet feel of his lips, and the way he would rock onto his toes to push them onto Kon’s. Tim kissed the same way he spoke; softly but with purpose. Sometimes he stuttered when he spoke. Sometimes he shivered when he kissed. But he never lost sight of his goal. The message he was trying to get across. The kiss he was trying to share.

 

A familiar knock at the door.

 

“Ma,” he moaned.

 

The knob twisted and Martha poked her head into the room. “Are you awake?”

 

“No.”

 

“I need your help.”

 

“I’m asleep.”

 

A loud sigh. “You’re moping aren’t you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Yes you are.” She flicked the lights on and moved across the room to remorselessly pull off his blanket.

 

“Ma!”

 

“Get up. You have chores.”

 

“Chores?”

 

“Huh,” she popped her fists on her hips. “Now I know I taught you better than that, boy. Chores are the thing we all gotta do, and the thing you _really_ gotta do if you want to get out of the stinker you’ve put yourself in with this pack.”

 

He didn’t move.

 

She sighed. “Come on, up and at ‘em. I refuse to let Alfred do all the work and you need to get back in this pack’s good books. This is how you’re going to do that. We need you.”

 

He squinted up at her. “What for?”

 

“Firewood.”

 

“Firewood?”

 

The biggest fireplace in Wayne Manor was in the dining room. It took up one third of the wall, overshadowed the elongated table, and sat below an imposing portrait of Solomon and Joshua Wayne; the two brothers, Alfred explained, who built the house in 1855. Solomon was a judge, a lover of gothic architecture, and Bruce’s great great great grandfather. Joshua only lived in the manor for a couple of months after it was built before he was married into another family.

 

Looking at the painting Kon wasn’t sure which was which.

 

“…Solomon had five children,” Alfred went on eagerly as Kon split another log of wood in his hands. “The youngest, Alan, was the only alpha and sired Laura Elizabeth who sired, well, quite a lot of children actually. She and her mate where known to be a bit rowdy. It was before we Pennyworths stepped in to calm things down you understand. Laura’s only surviving alpha child however was Patrick who in turn sired Thomas; Bruce’s father.”

 

“How much of the Wayne family history do you know?” Martha asked as she threw the last couple of pieces of wood he’d broken up into the fireplace and gestured to Kon.

 

He ignited it with a burst of heat vision.

 

“All that there is to be known, and perhaps a bit more,” Alfred told her. “When I first came here my father insisted I memorise the entire sire lineage before I step through the front door. The rest of the family tree I had until the end of my first week.”

 

Kon frowned. “Sire lineage?”

 

“The core pack bloodline,” Alfred explained. “It’s what separates the old elite family packs from new money. The Wayne’s have a solid line back to Charles and even Nathanial Wayne in England. If we are a bit liberal, or shall I say creative, we can link all the way back to Sir Gaweyne de Weyne.”

 

Martha smiled. “’Creative’ Alfred?”

 

“No more so than the royal family I assure you, Mrs Kent.”

 

She clucked her tongue in disapproval. “How many times do I have to tell you to call me Martha?”

 

“At least once more it would seem.”

 

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t you try?”

 

Alfred shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly.”

 

“But,” Kon spoke up and blinked as the two betas looked at him as if he’d interrupted something. “I… eh… it’s only a history of the alphas?”

 

The butler nodded. “The sire lineage is typically, yes. Usually it’s only a record of the first born alphas who often double as the pack leaders. The bare bones of a family tree, as it were.”

 

“Alphas are the only people that tend to carry on a family name,” Martha explained softly. “Omegas change their names and, back then, betas didn’t normally have children. IVF didn’t exist yet.”

 

“But they adopted,” Kon protested. “Like Bruce adopted Tim.”

 

“Tim is still called ‘Drake’,” the woman went on. “Remember  _Wuthering Heights_? In old elite family packs that’s very important. The adopted children maintain their birth names to not confuse the pack’s core bloodline.”

 

Alfred coughed. “I should point out Master Timothy was offered the family name and indeed sometimes has been known to use it.” A small smile. “You see, Mrs Kent, this family isn’t quite as old fashioned as all of that.”

 

“But…” Kon started again earning himself another strange look. “If Tim’s not…” he tried to find the right word… “ _…core_ then…?”

 

“I’m not what?”

 

Kon jumped.

 

Tim stood in the doorway wearing last night’s clothes and hair from a couple of days before that. The bruises on his cheek had darkened sometime in the last ten hours and grown to blotch almost half his face, his wrists looked thinner than usual, and the gaping neck of his shirt left one shoulder exposed. His skin was white. Very white.

 

“Ah, Master Timothy, you’re awake,” Alfred said.

 

“Tim,” Kon said, voice higher pitched than he’d intended. “Hi. Um… Hi.”

 

The omega’s eyes didn’t quite meet his. “Hi Kon.” Voice tight.

 

“We were talking about the Wayne sire lineage, young sir,” Alfred filled in the following silence.

 

“Oh,” the omega padded into the room and crouched by the fireplace. “Did you tell them about Sir Gaweyne de Weyne?”

 

“I have indeed, young sir.”

 

“That’s cool right?”

 

“Yeah,” Kon muttered. “Cool.”

 

“I’ve never seen this fire lit,” Tim went on, holding up his hands to the spreading flame.

 

“That was my doing,” Martha declared proudly. “You have this beautiful big room and you never use it. Honestly boys, it was just too sad. I thought a fire would tempt some of you in.” A deep breath. “After everything it’s nice, yes? A place for us all to be together? I don’t understand why you eat in the kitchen. It’s getting awfully crowded around that table.”

 

“Where are Dick and Jason?” Tim asked. “Aren’t they up yet?”

 

A weighted pause.

 

“Master Jason is asleep,” Alfred said softly. “In the cave.”

 

“In the cave?”

 

“He couldn’t sleep.”

 

Tim wrinkled his nose. “Oh, you gave him ace didn’t you? I hate that stuff. Bruce made me take some once after a fight with Scarecrow when I got hit with the fear. I don’t even remember falling asleep but when I woke up I felt terrible.”

 

“That might not have solely been the doing of the ace,” Alfred remarked softly.

 

Kon approached Tim carefully and slumped down beside him. The omega looked up and away.

 

“Hey,” he whispered as the betas continued talking over their heads. “Did you get…? I left a pear.”

 

“I got it. You were in the room when I ate it.”

 

“Right,” Kon mumbled, not sure what he was meant to say to that. “Sorry. I didn’t notice.”

 

A pause.

 

“So,” he tried. “Does that mean you forg—no, I mean, I know it doesn’t cover it but—are we…?” He fished for a word. “…good?”

 

Tim looked at him, expression unreadable.

 

“Okay, dumb question,” he said.

 

“Yeah,” the omega agreed. “Really dumb.”

 

“I’m sorry. Really I am. I was just… trying to be an alpha. I didn’t think of you. Not really. Not the way I should of. I know you don’t think I get that but I do. I fu—” he remembered Martha’s presence. “—messed up. I’m sorry.”

 

Tim looked at him. Really looked at him.

 

He forced a thin smile. “I have another pear if you want.”

 

Tim considered this for a long time. “No," he answered.

 

Kon's heart sank. "Okay," he lied. "That's fine."

 

"Look Kon I..." Tim's brows drew together. "You hurting Jason... that's not cool. This is my pack. I want to stay with this pack. I..." he closed his eyes. "I don't think I can eat anything right now anyway."

 

A flutter of dread. "Are you...?"

 

"No," Tim shook his head and looked into the fire. "It's not a pre-heat thing. It's a 'my mouth tastes really bad and my stomach hurts' kind of thing. I know Bruce just thinks I'm stress nesting but I think I might actually be getting sick." His eyes flicked back to him. "Keep the pear. I’ve still got the best bit of the old one.” He pulled the stem from his pocket. “I think I’ve worked out the trick. Want to see?”

 

Kon blinked. “You’ve worked it out? No way. I have superpowers. You can’t work it out before me.”

 

Tim’s lips twitched traitorously towards a smile as he placed the stem between his teeth and looked at him expectantly.

 

“That log,” Kon dared, nodding towards the fire.

 

Tim’s brow puckered.

 

Kon quickly burnt a mark in it with his heat vision. “That one.”

 

Alfred. “What are you two doing?”

 

Martha. “Is this the pear trick again? Have you worked it out?”

 

Tim looked up at her, visibly gathered himself before the impromptu audience, and spat. The hardened pear stem shot from between his teeth and to Kon’s shock hit the mark he’d made in the wood hard enough to stick in the soft bark.

 

In disbelief. “You did it.”

 

Martha laughed. “Good work Tim!”

 

“Quite the party trick Master Timothy.”

 

“I can’t believe you figured it out,” Kon heard himself. “How?”

 

“I’m the World’s Second Greatest Detective,” the boy told him; eyes wide and earnest.

 

“No, I mean how. How do you do it? I spent hours trying. I think I almost figured out frost breath trying to do it.” He smiled cheekily. “Wanna see?”

 

Tim nodded, well and truly fooled. “Yeah. Show me.”

 

Kon took the omega’s hand, stole the opportunity to gently interlock their fingers, and brought it up to his mouth to gently blow across the boy’s knuckles.

 

“That’s not ice breath,” Tim called him out. “You’re just blowing.”

 

“But if I do this,” he breathed on his fingers. “It’s warm.”

 

“That’s because you just exhaled onto me. Blowing it cold. It’s science. _I_ can do that.”

 

Kon contorted his face into a false mask of shock. “You’ve got super powers too?”

 

Tim blinked, snorted, and smiled.

 

It was an open smile and hit Kon harder than he expected _. How the fuck did other alphas pass him up for a shot at a high level?_ Tim might be a low level omega but he was _gorgeous_. Soft blue eyes, long lashes, and a gentle kind of manhood that left him thin artistic lips, long expressive brows, and feather soft hair. All of it complimented rather than undermined by his quieter calmer scent.

 

His teeth were pink.

 

Kon frowned. Tim always brushed his teeth. Even when he forgot to shower, to comb his hair, or change clothes he always remembered his teeth. What did he eat to turn his teeth pink?

 

“Wha—?”

 

Kon heard the unfamiliar heartbeat, the rattle as its owner tried to pick the window lock, and the foreboding creak as they succeeded. All the noises clashing together in his brain like alarm bells; loud, angry, and wrong.

 

Intruder.

 

He scrambled to his feet, scanned the house looking for the breach, and – ridiculously – stopped a moment to try to figure out what the hell he was meant to do. Bruce said Leviathan would try something. He’d been saying that from the very beginning and he’d been right every step of the way. Whoever was downstairs had evaded the police, the first lot of security systems, and now was inside the manor.

 

Assassin.

 

Clark was unconscious, Jason and Tim were hurt, and Kon couldn’t hear Dick anywhere. He was the only one left. The last man standing. It was up to him. He needed to protect the manor, keep the pack leader safe, and keep the assassin away from the pack.

 

“Kon?”

 

“Stay here.”

 

“Wait. What’s happ—?”

 

Sucking in a deep breath he ran from the room, eyes glowing red, and swept into the lavish drawing room to catch the intruder halfway through the window. It was a woman. Her hair was braided back from her face in a lethal knot and coat hooded.

 

“Hey!”

 

She looked up.

 

He stopped.

 

“Conner?”

 

In disbelief. “Lois?”

 

“Ha!” The woman wriggled a little further through the window. “I knew I’d find you lot here. I knew—shit. Okay, I’m stuck. Could you give me a bit of a boost?”

 

Dumbly. “Boost?”

 

“Boost,” she echoed. “A helpful hand. A nudge. It’s about as warm as Pluto outside right now and – in case my awkward positioning didn’t give it away - my arse is still out in it.”

 

“Oh. Sure. Okay.” He stepped forward to help her through the window in a haphazard muddle of limbs. Her wriggling impeded the process rather than help it but, somehow, he managed to get her inside, upright, and the window closed behind her.

 

“Thanks kiddo. That was some boost.”

 

“You’re welcome,” he responded uncertainly.

 

Lois Lane, award winning investigative journalist, stood in Wayne Manor as if she hadn’t just broken in; her warm beta aroma spicing the air around her, and coat running water down onto the floor. There was an unfamiliar hardboiled edge around her eyes and her face looked strange void of any and all makeup.

 

“What are you doing here?” Kon asked.

 

“I could ask you the same question,” she said as she straightened. “I mean, Gotham? Seriously? With weather like this? Why would anyone voluntarily live here? Kansas isn’t exactly the sunshine state but when it gets cold it has the decency to snow instead of…” she waved a hand at the wall of rain outside. “…whatever the hell that is.”

 

“It rains in Metropolis,” Conner pointed out uncertainly.

 

“Yes, it rains,” she admitted. “That out there right now is not rain. There is more water than air. It’s opposite rain. We’re underwater with some bubbles coming down.”

 

He let that image settle with him for a moment.

 

“Anyway,” she stepped forward.

 

He sped to block her. “Wait! I don’t know if I’m allowed to let you in.  _Really_  in. Things are really scary right now. There are bad guys out to get us. Really bad guys. They hurt Clark.”

 

Her gaze softened. “Yeah, I figured.”

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

“Clark missed a deadline,” she said. “He’s never missed a deadline. Not in all the years I’ve known him.”

 

“He doesn’t work for the Daily Planet anymore.”

 

“He was writing a Batman Inc. article for us. I saw the draft.” She tipped her head. “It was very biased.”

 

“And so you came here?”

 

She sighed. “I know who Batman is – or was – and why Clark’s mailing address is a PO box. I know he lives here. I know Batman Inc. rescued him this morning from the docks.” A long look. “He’s my best friend, Conner. I know we don’t hang out as much anymore but if he’s hurt I…” her voice hitched. “…would like to see him.”

 

Conner shuffled uncertainly. “I should ask Bruce.”

 

“Good. Yes. Let’s ask. I’ll come with you.”

 

“I don’t know if that’s allowed.” Bruce was in the cave. Was Lois allowed to see the cave? If she knew about Batman would it really be bad if she saw the cave? If she wanted to see Clark she  _had_  to see the cave. But would Bruce be angry if he took her down there? He knew he was already walking a thin rope when it came to Bruce.

 

He didn’t know if he could handle Bruce’s anger a second time so soon after the first.

 

“You don’t know if that’s allowed,” Lois echoed. “Wow. So this pack is really strict then? Clark can’t be the leader. Is it Bruce? How is he as a leader?”

 

“I’m not part of the pack,” he told her.

 

An eyebrow arched. “Really? Funny behaviour then all this,” she waved a hand at him, “following pack rules, defending pack territory.”

 

“It’s not like that.”

 

She shrugged. “If you say so.”

 

“It’s not. It’s… Fine. Okay.”

 

Lois’s other eyebrow arched at that but she didn’t complain as he led her into the hall. As he did so he saw Tim step silently behind an ornate pillar; shadowing but not intervening and keeping himself far enough away Lois wouldn’t be able to detect his scent. Kon was grateful. If nothing else Tim’s unannounced presence was a validation from a pack member that this was a viable course of action. If he couldn’t take Lois into the cave Tim would stop him. But he didn’t… so Kon did.

 

He made sure not to show her how he opened the cave entrance in the study before ushering her down the steep flight of stone stairs funnelling into the bedrock.

 

When they stepped into the cave in earnest the woman gaped. “Okay, I got to admit. I’m a Fortress of Solitude fan-girl through and through but this is pretty impressive. Holy shit, how many batmobiles does he have? And what’s the deal with the t-rex? Do you really need—?”

 

“Miss Lane.”

 

She stopped.

 

Bruce stood at the door of the medical wing; eyes an unsettling pale blue and one arm holding his protruding pregnancy. Somehow his scent reached all the way across the cave to touch them; strong, angry, omega.

 

Kon swallowed.

 

Bruce looked terrifying; everything about him predatory and powerful. The furthest thing imaginable from the playboy billionaire Lois likely knew. Despite it the woman didn’t seem daunted as she strode across the cave to meet him.

 

“Bruce. I know this is an invasion and at the worst possible time, and I’m so sorry for that, but I came to see Clark.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I came in through the forests over there.”

 

“I know.”

 

“And,” Lois continued, “Your secret is safe with me. All your secrets. Batman, the super-baby, all of it.”

 

“I know.”

 

Kon approached hesitantly, eyes flicking between the two. Despite simular colouring they didn’t look a thing alike. Bruce was frightening; everything from the shape of his lips to his natural stance was intrinsically aggressive. Lois was passive power; persuasive and beautiful in a way that wouldn’t be immediately apparent but was undeniable once one recognised it.

 

“And, it’s an honour to meet you,” she ploughed on. “Clark’s told me a lot about you. Well, actually, no he hasn’t but he’s allowed me to infer a lot about you. Beyond that there is the whole Batman thing. Plus the ‘I would rather give up seven billion dollars than my independence’ thing. Plus the—”

 

“Miss Lane,” Bruce interrupted her.

 

“Please, call me Lois.”

 

“I am not in the mood for anymore guests today, Lois.”

 

Kon frowned. Anymore guests?

 

“I’m here to see Clark,” the woman declared.

 

“I know.”

 

“Can I talk to him?”

 

“No.”

 

Her smile slipped. “Is he okay?”

 

“He’s fine.”

 

“Then why can’t I talk to him?”

 

No answer.

 

“Bruce,” Lois said his name slowly. “I know this is a bad time but—”

 

“It is a bad time,” he agreed. “A very bad time.”

 

“But…”

 

“This is my house, Miss Lane. My pack. My mate.”

 

“My friend,” Lois cut in. “I came here to see him. I would have called if this house had any listed number. I _did_ call Clark but his phone is dead.” Her look didn’t waver; neither desperate nor hostile but earnest and unrelenting. “What’s happened to him? Is he okay? That’s all I need to know. You let me know he’s okay and I’ll get out of here.”

 

“Conner,” Bruce called.

 

“Yeah?” He shuffled forward a step.

 

“Please show Miss Lane out.”

 

“Wait!” Lois threw up a hand; stopping him before he had a chance to do anything. “I’m just asking for a moment, Bruce. Surely you can give me that.”

 

For the first time Bruce’s composure shivered and his lips twitched back from his teeth. “ _Surely_ , Miss Lane? _Surely_ you can understand my pack is under attack. _Surely_ you can see you’re a trespasser here. _Surely_ you know the absurdity of what you’re asking.”

 

“I’m asking to see my friend.”

 

“I let you come in here because I didn’t want to wake my pack when you sounded the perimeter alarms. That is it. My pack is being destroyed in front of my eyes and I don’t want you in the middle of it. I don’t want to have a stranger in my territory. Not right now.” A dark look. “I can’t do that right now.”

 

“But!”

 

“Conner,” Bruce looked at him.

 

“I…” he turned apologetically to the woman beside him. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Sorry? I’ve been…” her voice faulted and eyes widened.

 

Conner followed her gaze. Sucked in a breath.

 

It was Clark. Naked by for the tattered remains of his cape held around his waist, hovering through the air with sleepy thoughtlessness, and frowning in groggy confusion as he took in the scene before him. “Lois?”

 

Bruce’s face slackened as he spun around to face the other man. “Clark…”

 

“What are you doing here?”


	19. Chapter 19

At first Clark was afraid to open his eyes.

 

He was afraid he would open his eyes to some cold dark supervillain’s lair. He was afraid he would open his eyes to the sight of Damian with a sword through his chest. But, most of all, he was afraid he would attempt to open his eyes and discover he could not. To be trapped as he was before in blackness; in nothingness; in death.

 

In the place that wasn’t. The place emptier than the phantom zone. The place that was worse than a nightmare; a lack. Limitless, infinite, and all-consuming.

 

Clark shuddered away from the memory, his body twitching and shivering back into life. Fingers, toes, and limbs.

 

That small movement leant him the courage to suck in a slow breath and slowly peel back his eyelids. He opened his eyes. The relief was extraordinary.

 

_Life. Breath. Movement. Sight._

 

All of them treasures. All of them beautiful enough to bring a hot prickle of tears to the corners of his newly opened eyes. All of them things he’d fought for and clung to when the man-bat’s spell had hit him and robbed him of his powers.

 

He’d fought for life because as terrifying as nothing – as death – was resigning himself to it was even worse. He couldn’t let himself die without knowing if Damian was okay, he couldn’t abandon Bruce on the eve of parenthood, and he couldn’t leave without ever holding his daughter. He couldn’t let that be it. Not with so much left undone.

 

Solar lamps hung over him in a patch work prism; their radiation warm, homely, and strong enough to leave his skin buzzing with potential energy. His powers were back, his wounds gone, and he was alive.

 

He was home.

 

He knew he was home because the mattress under his was almost as hard as rock. Bruce liked stiff mattresses. A lot. Whenever they spent a weekend at Smallville the billionaire would always manage – through the course of the night – to wriggle on top of him as if trying to escape the soft embrace of the bedding. Clark didn’t mind. Bruce wasn’t much of a cuddlier and it was nice to know he had become so subconsciously accepted in the man’s bedspace that even asleep Bruce knew he was there and that he was safe.

 

In such times Clark would just lie still, gently touch the man if he had an arm free to do so, and drink in Bruce’s scent; no less beautiful in sleep than it was when he was awake.

 

Bruce’s scent was strong around him now. Almost as strong as it was when he slept on him. But it wasn’t beautiful. Not just then. It was unwashed, unhappy, and coloured with a bitter sweet touch of wretched fear so subtle Clark doubted he would have been able to pick it up if Bruce and he weren’t bond mates.

 

His sense of smell wasn’t as dominant among his other senses as it was in humans. As proven by his powers his sense of sight was by far his strongest natural asset. But by merit of his powers he could smell as much as humans; even if he couldn’t read scents as well as Bruce.

 

He looked around, stirred on by the instinctual unrest that smell brought. His mate was unhappy. His mate was hurting. His mate needed him.

 

“Bruce,” he croaked.

 

No answer.

 

“Bruce?”

 

He hovered off the bed, taking to the air without a second thought, and mindlessly followed the burning fresh scent of the other man. Bruce had been here moments ago. He’d been here mere _seconds_ ago. But he’d left quickly as if something had disturbed him. Something like…

 

Clark stopped suddenly as he saw Jason asleep in a bed on the other side of the room. The young alpha was well and truly unconscious, breathing slowly, and prone under the thick cover of a blanket someone had tucked in around him. He also looked like he’d been in a fist fight… a bad one.

 

A nervous sting of alarm shot through him at the thought. Had Talia attacked the manor? Had someone attacked Batman Inc.? Was that the mysterious stage five of her plan? The thoughts bounced around with sickening speed in his brain but the sight of the other man also prompted him to grab a hold of his cape bundled atop a counter and wrap it around his hips. It wasn’t much but it would have to do.

 

With that covering his nakedness he flew after Bruce’s scent only to come up short as he found the man a moment later within the main cavern of the cave. He was not alone.

 

“Lois?” He muttered, confused. “What are you doing here?”

 

The woman gaped at him, Bruce turned breathlessly muttering his name, and Tim stepped out of the shadow at the back of the cave. Clark couldn’t figure out why they were there, what they were doing, or how his ex-girlfriend came to be in the mix, but whatever had been going on before was forgotten the moment he flew in.

 

Conner was the first to really react.

 

The boy launched himself into the air and sped across the open space to wrap his arms around Clark’s shoulders. “You’re up,” he said. “You’re up. You’re up.”

 

“Yeah, kiddo.” He forced his voice into its usual tenor. “You okay?”

 

“Not really,” Kon muttered. “But it’s good now you’re up. That’s all.”

 

“Smallville,” Lois came next.

 

He politely dropped to the ground, the boy still hugging him, to accept her embrace as well.

 

“Oh boy,” Lois began. “You had me shitting my pants for a while there. Really. I was so fucking scared. First Superman was missing, then I couldn’t get through to your phone, and then the scary ‘get away from my mate’ boyfriend you’ve got over there had me imagining the worst. Seriously, yikes. Whoever said omegas weren’t intimidating enough for the military is a moron. I’m shaking in my boots here.”

 

“He bat-glared,” Kon whispered.

 

“The glare has a name,” Lois said. “Why did I not see that coming? Of course the glare has a name.”

 

Clark glanced up at Bruce.

 

The omega hadn’t moved but his features were drawn, composed. Tim was now beside him, equally as unreadable. Another few years and the boy would be able to master the glare Kon was so afraid of.

 

“Give me a sec, guys,” he gently pushed them off him and moved towards Bruce. Carefully. He didn’t know what was wrong but he knew from Bruce’s off key scent something was. Perhaps a whole lot of somethings. Perhaps it had something to do with him.

 

If Bruce needed to yell at him for leaving he would understand. Bruce knew it wasn’t his fault, he knew Bruce knew that, but he also knew Bruce bottled stress in unhealthy ways and wasn’t very good at venting it when he needed to. If he did need to let something out Clark would let him. Gladly.

 

It would be a relief dealing with the awkward mundane mess of inter-pack drama over the bleak black promise of death.

 

But Bruce didn’t yell. He didn’t embrace him either.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Clark opened his mouth to reply, stopped as he processed the question, and nodded. “Y-yeah.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Clark nodded again. “Yes. I…” Darkness, nothingness, death. “…I’m dealing with it.”

 

Bruce stared at him; skin white and lips thin. He looked older than when Clark had seen him last. The lines around his eyes, between his brows, and either side of his lips were deeper; his hair was listless; and cheeks hollow. But it was Bruce. His mate. His man. Bearing his child who was sucking her thumb between his hipbones.

 

“Bruce…” he stepped forward.

 

The omega reached out, took his hand without permission or apology, and towed him across the cave and back into the medical bay. The second there was a wall between them and those gathered nearby he stopped, turned, and kissed him. Hard. The force of it that of a drowning man clutching onto a floating log. The taste both sweet and coppery all at once.

 

There was nothing sexual about this kiss. Nothing romantic. It was closer to an attack. But it was also raw, real, and triggered a vague sense of déjà vu.

 

Clark fell into it, inhaled the feeling, and wrapped his arms around the other man. His baby bump was just big enough to make the embrace a challenge but he managed it; bringing their faces together so their foreheads touched.

 

“Fuck Clark,” Bruce breathed as their lips parted. “ _Fuck_. You have no idea how much I needed that. How much I needed you.” His hand was warm within Clark’s. “Since you left everything’s gone to hell. Jason’s hurt, Dick’s patrolling, and Damian…” Bruce’s hand fisted in his shirt. “Damian…”

 

The omega’s scent broiled with a strong foul undercurrent. A wretched physical manifestation of psychological pain.

 

“Hey,” Clark tightened his hold around the other man and echoed Bruce’s earlier question. “Are you okay?”

 

“No,” Bruce answered simply.

 

“Damian’s okay,” he promised.

 

“No he’s not,” the omega rasped.

 

“Yes he is.”

 

“You saw him?”

 

“Yes I…”

 

The man held up his hand, stopping him. “Not like that. Start at the beginning. Like we do at the Justice League.”

 

Clark stared at him. “Huh?”

 

“What happened to you?” The omega repeated. “Report.”

 

He heard the hitch and scrape in the word. The raw note of smothered emotion.

 

“It…” Clark glanced around the cluttered medical bay. “It was Leviathan. Talia.” He couldn’t say her name without choking a little. “Her man-bats attacked the museum and one of the leaders had a magical item. I didn’t notice it until it activated and then I… I…” the memory of darkness, of nothing, of death, bombarded him. “W-when I woke up Damian was fighting Heretic.”

 

Bruce’s eyes sharpened. “Heretic?”

 

“Damian’s brother.”

 

A strange look filtered across the omega’s face. “Damian’s brother?”

 

“Yes. Heretic is what Damian calls him.”

 

“Is he a threat?”

 

“No,” Clark swallowed. “Talia beheaded him.”

 

A shocked look shot across Bruce’s face. “Baby teeth,” he breathed.

 

Clark frowned. “What?”

 

“The head,” Bruce muttered, brows pleating. “Dick found it a few hours ago. He sent it to my company. It had full baby teeth. I didn’t understand it. I just knew – hoped – it meant it couldn’t be Damian. But I… I doubted and…” A long look. “It was his brother? The one he used to talk about? His twin?”

 

“Yes,” Clark said softly.

 

“Thank God,” Bruce closed his eyes. “Thank God. _Thank God_.”

 

Clark felt a sickening wedge lodge inside him. “He was your son too.”

 

“I know,” Bruce rasped. “And I know it’s wrong but,” he closed his eyes.

 

Clark saw it. The weakness in Bruce’s outer shell. The crack.

 

“I thought it was him,” Bruce croaked, soft enough no one but Clark would be able to hear it. “I thought she’d done something to him, and killed him. The baby teeth were the only thing. I…” he hugged him tighter as the ugly unhappiness in his scent rose to the surface and began to – in part – dissipate. “Fuck Clark. I can’t tell you how much I needed to hear that. How much I needed… a win.” The hand within his was warm. Very warm. “Since you left everything’s gone to hell.”

 

Clark looked down. “You’ve burnt your hand,” he whispered.

 

An almost choked laugh. “You damn perfect bastard.”

 

He felt himself smile at the pet name. “You’re beautif—” he began his usual response. Stopped. “You thought the head was Damian’s?”

 

Bruce nodded.

 

“And Dick found the head hours ago?”

 

Another nod.

 

A cold sinking feeling. “Damian’s not home?”

 

“No.”

 

“How long have I been unconscious?”

 

“Fourteen hours,” Bruce responded and stepped out of his embrace, all business again. “Was Damian planning on returning home under his own power in that time?”

 

“I-I think so.”

 

“Tell me.”

 

“I saved him from Heretic and then he ran. I told him to go home.”

 

“Perhaps he went back to Talia?” The omega suggested.

 

He shook his head. “No. He only went there because he thought you would kick him out of the pack for telling Talia about me. He thought I was dead, and it was his fault. _I_ thought I was dead. I was…” he couldn’t talk about it. Couldn’t…

 

“Clark?”

 

“He ran towards the city,” Clark croaked. “But he was hurt.”

 

The omega’s eyes sharpened. “Hurt?”

 

He nodded.

 

“How hurt?”

 

“He’d been stabbed through the ribs.”

 

Bruce’s eyes widened. “ _Stabbed_ , Clark?!”

 

The others wandered inside, prompted by the loud noise; first Tim, then Conner, and Lois looking almost guilty to be witnessing this.

 

“You left him alone,” the omega snarled, finally getting around to the yelling part. “After he’d been stabbed through the chest?!”

 

“I…”

 

“There is no way being stabbed there didn’t hit a vital organ,” Bruce ploughed on. “If it was the heart he would be dead, if it was a lung then he’d be dying, if it was the stomach every second he goes without treatment he’ll be poisoning himself. Which is it?!”

 

“Lung,” Clark said softly. “I closed the wound.”

 

“You…” Bruce bit his bottom lip and visibly got control of himself. “He ran towards the city?”

 

Clark nodded.

 

“Okay,” Bruce raked a hand through his hair. “We need to focus our search on inner city and the southern districts then. If he’s not with Talia then there would be no reason for him to return to the dockyards and if he attempted to come home he would have been heading South West.” Softly. “We also need to double check all boys admitted to the hospitals in those areas.”

 

Tim slunk into view as he spoke. “You think Damian’s in hospital?”

 

“No,” Bruce answered.

 

“I could check,” the boy offered. “I can hack their systems from my room.”

 

“The cave computer can do it faster,” Bruce rebuffed. “And the police know Damian is missing. There is no advantage going behind their backs.”

 

“But…”

 

“I could fly around and look for him,” Clark suggested. “My powers are back and…”

 

Bruce. “No.”

 

The abruptness of that denial shocked him and sent a flash of instinctual unease through him. “But,” he tried to reason with him. “Bruce, it makes sense.”

 

“No it doesn’t. There is no sense in risking you when all you would be able to do is the same job as the robots. Besides,” Bruce’s eyes grew firmer. “No one is to go anywhere alone until we’ve defeated Leviathan.”

 

“You just told me Dick’s patrolling,” he said.

 

Tim. “What?”

 

Bruce. “Dick went out against orders and is not in contact with the cave.”

 

Tim. “Wait, _what?_ ”

 

The older omega didn’t look away from Clark as he continued. “Jason was going to go out after him, but Alfred sedated him.”

 

“Seriously?!” Tim looked between them. “I… w-why would Dick do that? It’s not like we got any new information. It’s not like anything changed. It’s not like he was more upse—” the boy stopped suddenly, a look of horror filtering across his face.

 

“Whatever the reason,” Bruce ploughed on. “He’s no longer in search of Damian. He discovered the twin’s body. He thinks Damian is dead.” Grimly. “He has a new agenda now.”

 

Clark’s stomach twisted. “You think…?”

 

“I don’t know what he’s thinking, Clark. What I do know is we as a pack now have very little assets left to us. I am no longer physically capable. Neither is Jason.”

 

Kon ducked his head.

 

“Alfred and Martha are not physical assets.”

 

“Ma’s here?”

 

“And,” Bruce finished. “If Talia has magical items I don’t know how much of an asset you two are.” He nodded at Kon and Clark.

 

“I destroyed the item,” Clark mumbled.

 

“She may have more,” Bruce assured him. “The truth is we have very little defence against a front on attack which I assume is coming very shortly.”

 

“Talia mentioned something about a stage five,” he said.

 

“Yes. That would be it.”

 

“But,” Clark continued. “She said they might not be ready for it.”

 

Bruce frowned. “Leviathan has established itself as a global super criminal terrorist organisation. It has a huge amount of power. What could she possibly be doing that she would not be prepared for?”

 

No one answered. No one needed to. It wasn’t the kind of question Bruce expected to be answered. It was the kind of question he directed at himself. A mystery he needed to solve.

 

Lois cleared her throat. “I hate to be the rude unwelcome houseguest.”

 

Bruce. “Then leave.”

 

“But,” she ploughed on. “What if it’s not something big? I mean, this Leviathan lady knows she’s going up against Justice League if she comes in here all guns blazing. Wonder Woman, Flash, etc. are all pretty big – how did you put it? – assets.”

 

“They’re not guaranteed assets,” Bruce rumbled. “The members of the Justice League operate under their own schedule, deal with their own villains, and a home invasion isn’t…”

 

“Protocol be damned,” Clark cut in. “They’ll come to _this_ home invasion. Heck, it won’t even seem that strange if they do. Bruce Wayne is officially an affiliate of the Batman after all.”

 

“Yeah,” Lois said, voice dripping in sarcasm. “’Affiliate’ is the word people are using.”

 

A dark look. “I don’t care what word they’re using.”

 

“Which is awesome,” Lois told him. “Again. Huge fan. You’re the most badarse omega in the world and I love that you don’t care what people think. _But_ my point was; what if Leviathan attacks in a more subtle way?”

 

Tim nodded. “They are an off shoot of the League of Shadows.”

 

“It’s not their MO. These are the people who put a deep sea oceanic squid into a thirteenth floor apartment in Tokyo.” Bruce reminded them. “The whole point of her campaign is to prove how ridiculous Batman Inc. is. To prove how ridiculous superheroes are. That’s what this is all about.”

 

An ugly pause.

 

“You sure?” Tim scratched the back of his head. “I mean… you’re right. That’s part of it. But what about the love poetry?”

 

“She wants you,” Clark cut straight to the chase. “She’s calling you her mate and told me the reason she’s come back for you is your pregnancy has proved you still have the capability to bear children.” The words tasted foul in his mouth. “She wants you to bear her a child. I think she’s decided Damian and his brother weren’t good candidates for ‘king of the new world’ because she bore them and you sired.” A deep breath. “And, they aren’t the caste she wanted.”

 

Bruce’s eyes hardened. “What caste are they?”

 

“I don’t know. I didn’t check.”

 

Tim. “You can check?”

 

“Can I please write an article about this?” Lois asked.

 

“No,” Bruce snapped before turning back to the pack. “It’s not going to be subtle. I know Talia. That’s not what she’s going to do. It’s going to be big, showy, and dramatic. We can’t rely on the Justice League. They may not be able to help us and considering she had a strategy to take down Superman I think it likely she’ll have weapons she can use against the other powerhouses.”

 

Clark hated the word powerhouse.

 

“So?” Tim pressed. “Villains always have some new weapon to take us out. The Justice League is…”

 

Firmly. “We can’t rely on the Justice League.”

 

Clark. “I’m sure they’ll hel—”

 

“We can’t rely on the Justice League!”

 

A pause.

 

Somewhere nearby stalactite dripped onto a stalagmite. The sound a slow audible trigger. _Drip. Drip. Drip._

 

“Why don’t you want them to help us?” Tim asked.

 

The question hung in the air. Stagnant. Strong.

 

“I do,” Bruce said finally. “I just don’t want to rely on them.” Another pause. “Jason’s been on his left side for a long time. I’m going to go make sure he’s okay.”

 

The alpha was sleeping through the debate without issue. Each breath slow. His features strangely boyish loosened by slumber.

 

Clark reached out to stop his mate. “Hold on, Bruce.”

 

“Jason…”

 

“He’s fine.”

 

The man turned to him. “Please. That’s enough. I know what I’m doing. Trust me.” A deep breath. “I know Talia. Now just get rid of your girlfriend.”

 

Lois’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay, wasn’t expecting that.”

 

Clark felt strangely gutted as Bruce moved away but also compelled to obey. It was a strange corded need inside him he couldn’t name yet couldn’t deny.

 

“Lois,” he said softy. “I’m glad you came.”

 

She sighed and stepped forward to hug him. “I am too, Smallville. I know this isn’t the best of times but I needed to see you. I honestly didn’t expect to end up the batcave but…” she wrinkled her nose. “Insert some clever line about fate. End chapter.”

 

“This is not an article.”

 

“No, it’s a book. After you’re all dead I’m publishing the all-out expose: Superman and Batman: The Untold Love Story. Logline: It’s less gay than you’d think.”

 

“What if we outlive you?”

 

She snorted. “The way you two carry on? Not likely. But, just in case, I’ll leave the finished manuscript to you in my will.”

 

Bruce walked stiffly over to Jason, deliberately distancing himself from their conversation, and began re-tucking the blanket around the sleeping alpha.

 

Tim and Kon had drifted off into their own sector and were watching on, whispering.

 

“I don’t get it.” Tim breathed. “Why are we being so nice?”

 

“Nice?” Kon looked at the young omega. “Bruce has been _so_ mean to her.”

 

“She broke in here, Kon. Through a window.”

 

“I’ve done it heaps of times.”

 

“That’s different, you’re my boyfriend.”

 

The young alpha’s cheeks coloured pink as he smiled. That smile – and that colour – vanished as Kon’s gaze met Clark’s and he realised he’d been listening. “I…” Kon cleared his throat. “I don’t really sneak in though. That’s a joke.”

 

Tim looked at him strangely. “No it’s…”

 

“A joke,” the alpha interrupted and silenced Tim with a wave in Clark’s direction.

 

It wasn’t that Clark was opposed to the pair having sex. As long as it was safe, consensual, and at least a couple of days out of Tim’s heat he didn’t see a problem. He’d even left the pair alone at the Kent Farm for a couple of hours at a time. But this was Wayne Manor, Bruce’s territory, and Bruce’s rules were sex in his house was between eighteen year olds and up.

 

“Smallville?” Lois waved her hand in front of his face.

 

Clark looked down. “I’m here.”

 

“You tuned out on me.”

 

“Yeah, sorry.” He threw Kon what he hoped was a ‘we’ll talk about this’ look before turning back to Lois. “Where were we?”

 

“You’re meant to be throwing me out.”

 

“Huh?”

 

She smiled. “Jealous mate? Remember?”

 

“He’s not jealous.”

 

A sceptical look. “He called me your girlfriend.”

 

“He’s upset right now,” Clark told her earnestly.

 

She sighed and nodded. “I get that. Look, promise you’ll call me in a couple of hours. I want to know what’s going on. Even if you can’t really tell me much tell me you’re all okay, okay?”

 

“Okay,” he agreed.

 

She glanced over at Bruce and leant in to whisper. “And what’s the baby name so I can be the first to break the story when it’s born?”

 

“We haven’t decided yet.”

 

She visibly reeled. “Golly. By the looks of it you’re running out of time.”

 

“But,” he dropped to a whisper. “It’s a girl.”

 

She beamed. “I’m so happy for you Clark. Really. You’re going to be a wonderful dad.”

 

Clark began leading her out. “So is he.”

 

When he was at the back door giving Lois directions across the massive garden Kon obviously felt safe to start whispering to Tim again.

 

 _“I really miss kissing you,”_ the boy decided to jump straight in the deep end.

 

Tim’s response was biting. _“Kissing? Really? Just kissing?”_

_“Ouch. Alphas can like kissing too you know,”_ he promised. _“And I_ really _do miss kissing you. You’re…”_ a pause. _“…your lips are really red.”_

 

 _“You’re trying to convince me to kiss you,”_ Tim concluded. _“With my dad over there? You’re insane.”_

_“No, seriously.”_

_“I’m still angry at you, Kon.”_

 

 _“I mean it, your lips are really red.”_ Kon insisted.

 

Lois hugged Clark one last time. “See you later, Smallville.”

 

“See you…”

 

Tim. _“I… ew…”_

 

Kon. _“What is it?”_

 

 _“Blood.”_ He answered. _“I must have a cut in my mouth.”_

 

_“A cut?”_

 

 _“Yeah,”_ the omega’s voice grew playful. _“Still want to kiss me?”_

 

Clark waved Lois away, distracted. “Bye…”

 

 _“You’re bleeding,”_ Kon rasped in horror.

 

A soft laugh. _“I know, Kon. That’s what I just said. I must have a cut in my mouth.”_

 

_“No, your nose.”_

 

_“My…?”_

 

A nosebleed?

 

Clark frowned.

 

He’d never seen Tim with a nosebleed. Tim didn’t get nosebleeds. Not unless he’d just been hit in the face a moment before. Damian and Bruce were the two in the family that occasionally bled from the nose and even then it was rare and usually a spring affliction.

 

Tim. _“T-that’s weird.”_

 

Clark was downstairs in an instant. “Tim?”

 

The boy looked up, the bottom half of his face rapidly turning a bright vivid red. “W-what’s happening?”

 

“It’s just a nosebleed Timbo,” Clark forced some levity into his voice. “It’s nothing…” he caught sight of Bruce still standing by Jason.

 

The older omega was frowning, leaning against the bed, and bleeding from the corner of his mouth. Quietly. “I didn’t think of that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The omegaverse headcanons on Tumblr recently posted a whole bunch of new stuff. In one of the posts the words 'gender/caste' were used. Did you hear that? CASTE! It's so amazing to know a word I penned has penetrated this deep into fandom! I'm so happy.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter contains some heavy themes including racism and violence involving minors. You do not have to read this chapter for the story to make sense. The events will be reiterated later in the story.

_“Get out!”_

_“Liar!”_

_“Go away!”_

 

The words swam towards him like overweight eels through a milky mist. A swarm of voices. Shrill and scared. Each more articulate than the last; penetrating his sleep and bombarding his brain.

 

_“Why would you do that?!”_

_“I hate you!”_

_“Leave us alone!”_

 

He wanted to bat them away, curl up, and sink back into the black depths of sleep. But the off key chorus was growing louder, larger, and with each moment he felt himself being dragged – a fish on a hook – up towards the surface. Up towards too bright light, burning cold, and sounds that rattled against him like hail stones.

_“Go away!”_

_“I-I didn’t!”_

“You did!”

 

Damian cracked open his eyelids and immediately regretted it. He felt hot and cold all at once, his eyes were so dry blinking hurt, and his middle was a mess of pain. Every part of him remembering the abuse it suffered at the hands of his mutant brother.

 

He groaned.

 

“Robin?”

 

A face swum into view. Speckled and orange with slightly mismatched teeth and a pointed chin perched atop a long white neck.

 

“Colin?” He remembered.

 

“Yeah,” the head bobbed in a furious nod. “Are you okay?”

 

“No.”

 

“You have to get up. Matty turned into a beta overnight.”

 

“Matty?”

 

“Matty,” Colin hauled Damian into a sitting position, pulling him through a cloud of dizziness, and pointed across the narrow cement stairwell where they’d spent the night.

 

Squinting Damian could just make out a pile of kids shrieking and huddling together as they threw rubbish and stones at a bony boy who looked more terrified of himself than the objects hurtling through the air towards him.

 

“I-I didn’t do it!”

 

“You did!” A girl that couldn’t yet be ten yelled. Her hair was in strategic knots and jumper hung around her knees. “You made yourself smell beta!”

 

“I didn’t mean too!”

 

“You did! You did!”

 

“I g-got nowhere to go to,” he pleaded. “Please Jackie.” His long arms were shiny with sweat and cheeks flushed; still ploughing through the flush of presenting hormones that had marked him with the damning adult scent. “I ain’t done nothing.”

 

“You did!”

 

“You’re kicking him out?” Damian rasped in confused disbelief.

 

“He’s grown up,” Colin said softly. “Grownups do bad things to us.”

 

Damian looked on, frowning. Could they do that? Could a pack so easily remove a member for such a minor crime as bearing a scent? It didn’t seem right. Not when he thought about his father’s pack or the way Grayson talked about his birth pack. But, his father’s pack was the only true pack he’d ever known. Could other packs work like this? Have bonds weak enough to be snapped on a whim?

 

“I’m not a beta!”

 

“Yes you are!”

 

“I-I would never...”

 

As Damian looked around he saw a girl huddled under the stairs; watching on with ashen features. She was older than Matty. Taller, ganglier, and with a hint of breast blooming across her chest. But through some trick of fate she still wore the soft safe smell of a child.

 

She didn’t look relieved though. She looked terrified. Haunted. Alone.

 

She knew she was next.

 

All the other children looked eleven or younger. She looked thirteen and already she was clearly on the edge of the group. No one went too near her. No one talked to her. No one looked at her as they drove their former pack mate away.

 

Matty flinched as a coke can hurled by a five year old bounced off his brow. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

 

“Go away!”

 

“I-I can help. I can still…” the boy tried one more time.

 

“Go away!”

 

“You did! You did!”

 

“Stink like beta!”

 

“Why’d you do it?!”

 

“Bad! Bad!”

 

Damian didn’t have the energy to intervene and even if he had he didn’t know if he would. This wasn’t his business, this wasn’t his fight, and he owed Colin’s pack: if that truly was what they were. They’d accepted him without a second look, huddled around him to keep him warm as he slept, and offered him food. In their eyes he was already one of them. It felt strange, almost sickening, to be welcomed into this puppy pack without hesitation or even any dialogue only to see firsthand how they treated their own members when they made the ‘mistake’ of presenting.

 

“I-I got to get home,” he told Colin. “My pack. My father. They’re looking for me.”

 

“You said that before.” Something in the boy’s voice told him Colin didn’t believe him. He didn’t think he had a home, or a pack. But he accepted what he believed to be a lie out of politeness sake.

 

Perhaps he thought Damian was recently abandoned and in denial. Or maybe withdrawing from drugs and suffering through some kind of delusion. Whatever the case Damian didn’t have the strength to set him straight. Not just then.

 

Matty retreated as one of the children came at him with a tire iron. Then, all at once, realisation seemed to hit him. His face crumbled, hands shook, and without another word he turned and fled the throng of children. They spat after him; wild and betrayed.

 

“We have to move,” Colin said. “He knows where we are. He’ll tell the cops.”

 

“Shut up!” The girl in the massive jumper stalked over and glared at Colin. “I’m the boss. I say that.”

 

“O-okay. Sorry.”

 

“We have to move!” She yelled, talking to everyone. “He knows where we are. He’ll tell the cops.”

 

“I’m hungry,” a boy – couldn’t yet be five – whined.

 

“We’ll got get food,” the girl declared. “But we have to have best friends in case the robots come again.” She pointed at Damian. “What’s your name?”

 

“He’s Robin,” Colin piped up. “Like Robin Hood.”

 

“Like Batman and Robin,” she corrected him. “Okay. You’re Collie’s new best friend. If someone chases us, and we have to run, you stay with him so you’re never alone. Okay?”

 

“Okay,” he muttered.

 

“You promise?”

 

He bobbed his head. “I promise.”

 

Behind her other children we pairing up. The older girl was left alone.

 

“Good. I’m Jackie,” the ‘boss’ went on. “Like Jackie Chan. You follow me.”

 

“Okay,” he said again.

 

The girl nodded and walked away to help the young boy get his shoes on. Colin took the opportunity to haul Damian to his feet. It hurt and the flood of dizziness that followed almost sent him tumbling back over. The boy held him up and swung Damian’s arm along his shoulders.

 

“You’re real messed up, huh?”

 

“I…” he tried to say something. Failed.

 

“It’s okay,” he patted his arm. “I used to be messed up too. On V. It goes away after a bit. Even if you’re on something _real_ mean it goes away after a bit.”

 

He shook. Struggled to breathe. “I think I’m dying.”

 

Colin’s brow creased. “Really?”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“Please don’t die. You’re my best friend today.”

 

That statement bounced and bubbled around in is brain. Confusingly sticky. An idea he couldn’t get rid of.

 

Jackie hoisted the smallest kid onto her back and started for the door without looking back. “Follow me!”

 

It seemed to take an age. Damian hobbled along in the procession of kids; hungrier, dirtier, and thirstier than he’d ever been in his life. Breathing became a rhythm of pain, walking was easier when he lent on Colin, and the sun shone painfully bright as it slunk above the far horizon and shot straight down the concrete channel of buildings.

 

They found some oranges the garbage, stole a couple of donuts from a bakery, and drank out of a clogged gutter. At some point Damian realised the quest for food never stopped. Nothing was ever enough to feed everyone and everyone could always eat more. They didn’t find breakfast, eat, and do something else with the day. They kept looking. Kept finding. And kept going.

 

A restaurant had thrown out some stale bread, a shopping market some bruised apples, and someone half a bowl of curried rice. Somewhere else someone found a half-eaten kebab, another snatched a bag of chips from a storefront, and a man on a park bench saw them and ‘forgot’ a fish burger.

 

They stopped a couple of times to play in a park, throw things at adults who tried to approach, and hide from a patrolling police car the fish burger man called.

 

By midmorning they were wandering through a tangle of industrial streets, the youngest giggling over a burping contest two of the girls were having. They’d just knocked on the old lady’s window without response and were following a clearly well-known route towards another unknown location.

 

Damian walked with them and tried to think through the shakes, the pain, and the two bright lights.

 

He needed to get back to the manor. The easiest method would be to approach the next police car he saw but something about the way Colin huddled against him when the first one passed made that an impossibility. The boy was clearly scared of police – along with a lot of other things – and Damian had sworn he would be his best friend, at least for today. He couldn’t just run off without him.

 

To be honest, he could barely walk without him.

 

No police, then. He needed to find a car. If he had a car he could drive back to the manor. He could take Colin with him then. He could take them all with him if they wanted. That way he wouldn’t be abandoning anyone. He wouldn’t be breaking his promise.

 

“Look,” one of the girls breathed and pointed.

 

“What?”

 

“Over there.”

 

Up ahead, down a snug alley, a hot dog stand stood unguarded.

 

 

The pack surged forward greedily and within moments were all over the stand; pulling it open and eating whatever they could be it cooked or not. Damian took a loaf of sliced bread that was passed to him and ripped it open.

 

“Wait, watch this,” Colin grabbed a bottle of barbeque sauce and squirted it over the white bread. “I can make sandwiches.”

 

“That’s not a sandwich,” Damian informed him as the boy passed him two slices of bread filled with sauce.

 

“Yes it is. I know what a sandwich is. It’s a barbeque sandwich.”

 

Damian would have protested further if he wasn’t already halfway through eating the thing. It was the most delicious thing he’d ever had.

 

He was about to make another when he noticed a truck backed up and open at the other end of the alley.

 

He frowned.

 

It took up the whole space, barely enough room for a mouse either side, and had a heavy looking ramp lowered onto the pavement.

 

“Who would park like that?”

 

Colin looked up, a raw sausage hanging out of his mouth. _“Wuut?”_ He spoke around his food.

 

Damian pointed. “Like that.”

 

Colin looked over just as one of the girls screamed. A shrill pitching sound that echoed impossibly high off the near walls around them.

 

Damian spun.

 

Seven adults crowded into the other end of the alley holding up a chain link mesh in front of them like a shield. They looked like rejected gang members: a white woman with a swastika tattoo stood beside a hulking black man with scars along his knuckles. Further along the chain he saw someone wearing the Penguin’s old colours with Black Mask’s old gang’s bandana covering the bottom half of his face. One had even painted himself up like the Joker.

 

Bad guys. Loser bad guys.

 

But bad guys, Damian realised, that could hurt him.

 

“Get ‘em in!”

 

It was different. When he was Robin the supervillains would taunt, flaunt, or at least take a moment to laugh manically before the attack. These people didn’t do that. They just moved. Fast.

 

The children shrieked and fled in all directions. But they didn’t escape. There were no fire ladders, no manhole covers. Nothing but a narrow alley with an open truck at the far end.

 

Damian was hauled along by Colin, staring numbly at the people driving them effortlessly back towards capture.

 

They looked happy.

 

“…eleven! I count eleven!”

 

“Five more seconds. Get them in.”

 

“No. Thirteen!”

 

“Fuckin ace, bro. I never seen such a big group.”

 

“Three seconds. Someone could be calling the cops by now.”

 

“Christ, they’re loud.”

 

The clogged outside the truck. No one willing to go in yet no one able to find a way around or under it.

 

“We’re sure to get one out of this lot.”

 

“One? The size of them we’re sure to get three.”

 

“Stay focused you idiots.”

 

“Zero seconds. Why are they not in the truck?”

 

The adults charged forward, scaring half the children up the ramp and physically ramming into the last ones that held their ground. Colin hauled Damian up away from them, the boy’s breathing wild and panicked.

 

“I’m sorry,” Damian croaked as they retreated into the truck. “I don’t have my sword… should have seen them coming.”

 

The doors slammed closed behind them, plunging them into darkness. In seconds the truck engine was on and they were lurching from side to side.

 

“They’re jabbers!” Colin squeaked. “I’ve never been got by the jabbers before.”

 

Damian could barely hear him over the engine and the crying children. “What are jabbers?”

 

“They stick you,” Jackie’s voice rose out of the darkness. “They do it to see what you are. Alpha, beta, or omega. Then they take the omegas.”

 

Damian’s stomach rolled. “They take the omegas?”

 

Colin was crying. “I-I never been jabbed before.”

 

“They’re human traffickers,” Damian realised. “Right? They take the omegas and sell them.”

 

“I don’t know,” Jackie answered. “I been jabbed once before. They just took ‘em. I don’t know.”

 

“You’ve been jabbed?” Colin croaked.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“What’d you be?”

 

Her voice was small, tight. “They made me like a beta.”

 

“Y-you think I’d be a beta?” Colin asked hopefully. “They’d let me go?”

 

“Yeah,” Jackie said. “Yeah. We all just got to smell like betas, kay?”

 

“I’m an omega.”

 

A pause.

 

Colin’s arms tightened around him. “What? No. No, you’re not. Be a beta. Like us.”

 

“My mother tested me,” Damian said softly. “I’m a low level omega. They’ll get me. I-I can’t fight right now. I don’t have my sword. They’ll get me.”

 

“No!” Colin yelled. “You’re my best friend today! We have to stay together.”

 

“I… I can’t…”

 

Jackie. “Don’t be stupid. That’s just a made up rule.”

 

“No,” Colin rasped. “No it’s not.”

 

“Damn you,” Damian heard himself spit. “I tried. I was honouring….” He coughed. Pain, bile, and barbeque sauce. “…it. I was… I could have gone to the police. I could be home!”

 

“I’ll get big,” Colin whimpered. “I’ve done it once.”

 

“What?”

 

“If I concentrate really hard I can change. I did it once. I can be big and strong. Like Clayface.”

 

“Don’t lie!” Jackie yelled. “Y-you said that before and you couldn’t stop the cops taking Milly!”

 

“It’s not a lie!” He clutched Damian painfully against him. “I tried but I got scared.”

 

Jackie. “You’re a liar.”

 

“I’ll stop them jabbing you,” Colin promised Damian. “I’ll get big. I’ll do it this time.”

 

“I just need my sword,” Damian said. “I can use that even when I’m really sick. That’s all I need. My sword. Or a knife. Anything.” He’d never been so defenceless before. He’d never had so many people he needed to defend before.

 

The girl made an ugly sound. “You’re _both_ liars.”

 

Time passed. It could have been hours or minutes. He had no way of telling. He tried to comfort the boy clinging and shaking on his arm. Tried to think of a way to escape. Tried to keep breathing as he contemplated what was most likely about to happen.

 

He was an omega. They were looking for omegas. They were going to find him.

 

He needed to escape. He needed to take the others with him. There had to be at least one other omega among them and these gang members might drown the alphas and betas like the Russians used to. He needed to get them o—

 

Light.

 

Sudden. Blinding.

 

“Thirteen in total. Four boys. Nine girls.”

 

“Five whites. Four blacks. One Asian. Three Hispanic.”

 

“Where’s the Asian?”

 

“The screaming little one in the corner.”

 

“Hey. You sure that one’s Hispanic? Looks practically white to me.”

 

“Which one?”

 

“ _That_ one.”

 

“Ain’t no white kid with lips that fat. She’s _loco_.”

 

“Is there a white boy?”

 

“Two.”

 

The light – a teetering spotlight – swung directly on them.

 

“Okay, no. I’m _really_ calling bullshit there. The ginger’s white but the other one’s mixed.”

 

“Blue eyes, white skin.”

 

“He looks Turkish to me.”

 

“Then you’re bloody blind, aren’t ya? Blue eyes, white skin. That means white.”

 

“ _Look_ at him. He’s m—”

 

“Shut up, both of you! I don’t care what he is. Either he’s a bitch then we sell him as white, or he’s nothing and we throw him out.”

 

“A couple of my guys said they got a guy that wants some little white alpha boys. Two thousand a head.”

 

“That’s fucked up.”

 

“That’s business.”

 

The light peeled off them to focus on someone else as the people above kept talking. Damian blinked and peered around the inside of the truck; using the light to access the situation. The walls were lined with egg carton foam, the floor covered in tarps, and children crowded around the edges to escape the beam of light picking them out from an opening in the top of the truck.

 

Damian pulled Colin closer and whispered. “If you see anything like a sword give it to me.”

 

“I’m g-going to g-get big,” the boy stuttered.

 

“Yeah, okay. But look for a sword.”

 

“No,” the boy fixed him with a wide terrified stare. “I’ll do it. I can. If I don’t get s-scared.”

 

Damian frowned at him. Didn’t say a word.

 

The truck doors swung open and two people came in. Both of them big, burly, betas. One was a woman with a top knot and the other a man with a beard down to his nipples. Damian never thought he would ever be so scared of betas before.

 

They grabbed the nearest child before she could flee.

 

Damian thought they would pull her away. Return for the next. It didn’t work that way. They did it then and there.

 

Beard held down the shrieking girl as Top Knot produced a massive needle. Within seconds they’d wriggled the girl’s pants down and remorselessly thrust it into an arse cheek before decompressing the plunger.

 

Colin moved to look and Damian quickly directed his face away. “Just look for a sword.”

 

“I’m going to get big.”

 

“Just look for a sword.”

 

The pair didn’t wait to see the results before cornering and dragging the pants down of a second kid. By the time they were hunting a third the first girl was reeking of alpha and practically choking on the amount of saliva pouring from her mouth.

 

Too fast. It didn’t happen that fast. Not normally. Something was wrong.

 

A few of the children tried to flee only to find their way blocked by a line of adults with the mesh fence standing at the truck’s doors. For the first time Damian noticed it was interlaced with barbed wire.

 

_“Fuck!”_

 

He looked back into the belly of the truck. Jackie was in the air, being held up by Beard, and her teeth were deep enough in his hand to draw blood. Top Knot was laughing as she fished for a new syringe out of her backpack.

 

“Get it together. It’s a little girl. Probably a bitch.”

 

“Shut the fuck up!” He yelled, reached for his back pocket, and drew out a Swiss army knife.

 

Damian’s eyes locked onto the tool. _Yes._

 

He was on his feet and running before he realised that was his intension. Every step hurt, the world spun around him as if he were in the eye of a tornado, yet somehow he was there and he was wrestling with Beard for the knife.

 

“What the f—?!”

 

Muscle memory guided his fingers to the position required to break the man’s grip. Something deeper and more instinctual told him to keep twisting until he felt the bones in the man’s hands pop out of place.

 

“Ahh! He fuc—”

 

He slashed the man across the face. Once. Above the nose between the eyes.

 

It wasn’t deep. He didn’t have the reach, the weapon, or the energy for that. But it was enough. The man was down and writhing and the woman was staring at him.

 

From the sidelines someone was laughing. “Is a ten year old too much for you two?!”

 

“Go on! He’s practically falling over on his own!”

 

“Even I could stick him.”

 

The woman’s face reddened and she came forward.

 

He dropped, ran through her legs, and hamstringed her with two quick cuts. This time he did go deep.

 

She fell hard enough to rock the truck with a thunderous yell.

 

“He cut Kitty!”

 

“Fucking hell. The rest of you get in there. Get the job done. And if that one’s anything other than a bitch, gut him.”

 

“Try it!” Damian yelled. “I’ll kill the next one!”

 

“Get him!”

 

“Come on!”

 

“Robin!”

 

He looked around. “Colin?”

 

There. The boy was being held by a massive man covered in tattoos and was trying to kick away a second approaching with a needle already ready to go.

 

“Rob- _ah_!”

 

He charged forward. “Leave him alone!”

 

A hulking man tried to grab him and he cut off a couple of his fingers, a woman came at him with a syringe which he managed to jab into her ribs, and a massive person covered in shark tattoos kicked him once to which Damian responded by blindly hacking forward and somehow carving into the man’s kneecap. It was more luck than skill, more desperation than awareness. But he used it.

 

He could barely see what was happening around him. Could just make out Colin’s scent among the oppressive smell of panic around him. Couldn’t breathe. Every attempt at an inhale was agony, he was bleeding down his back, and no matter what he did he couldn’t find enough air.

 

Another pair of arms grabbed him and seized knife in his hand. _Not like this. I will not lose like this. Not now._

 

He kicked, writhed, bit. No use. He didn’t have the strength left to overcome the firm grip of the beta holding him in the air. He didn’t have anything left that could stop them locking him up, selling him, and drowning Colin in the Gotham River. He’d lost. He’d failed.

 

“I got him! I got him! Jono! Bring the stuff—”

 

Something very large thudded into them and for a moment Damian flew through the air. It was the most pain free moment of his day. Nothing pulling at him, weighing on him, or twisting him. Just air. Cold, crisp, and weightless.

 

_So this is what flying feels like…_

 

Then nothing.

 

“Robin!”

 

“Leave me alone, Grayson.”

 

“Robin?”

 

He opened his eyes reluctantly. “What?”

 

“You’re alive!”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

He was being held up by a man. Large. No. More than large. _Huge._

 

He thrashed.

 

“Hey! No! Rob! It’s me!”

 

He froze. “Me?”

 

“Me,” the man said.

 

Damian stared at him. A hulking brow, massive chin, and… a wild mane of orange hair. “Colin?”

 

He grinned revealing rows after rows of oversized teeth. “Yeah.”

 

“You’re big.”

 

“I told you.”

 

“You really are big,” Damian croaked. “You really are.”

 

The smile grew bigger. “You really can use a sword.”

 

“It was a knife,” he said.

 

“Same thing.”

 

“No. No not same…” he trailed off.

 

Colin didn’t smell like Colin. It was the same scent he’d come to known made heavy and heightened in a dense but explicitly adult scent.

 

“They got you,” Damian realised.

 

Colin’s huge head blushed. “Yeah. I think that’s how I managed to change. I think they put V in the needles. That’d be why everyone was turning so fast. Venom does that. It makes everything move through your body really fast. It’s what made me big the first time.”

 

“You smell…” he began.

 

“Gross?”

 

Damian hesitated. “No, not gross.” _Really_ not gross. “Different,” he settled with. “Really different.”

 

Colin made a face. “It _tastes_ different.”

 

The boy’s scent pressed around him; thick, confusingly familiar, jarringly new, and undeniably _alpha_.

 

Almost guiltily. “I thought you would be a beta.”

 

“I tried to be. I must have messed up.”

 

“You can’t choose,” Damian told him.

 

Colin wrinkled his nose. “That’s not fair.”

 

“It has to be that way.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because everyone would be a high level alpha if they could choose,” Damian said.

 

“Why?”

 

“Don’t be stupid.”

 

“What level am I?”

 

Damian stared at him hopelessly. “Level?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I…” he tried to make sense of the smells all frothing around him. “I don’t know.”

 

“Collie?” Damian looked down. Jackie was standing in the corner of the truck in front of a cluster of terrified youngsters. Her mouth was covered in blood where she’d bitten through the skin of her attackers and her scent was still that of a child. “You’re big,” she said in wonder.

 

“Y-yeah. I’ll get normal sized again in a bit.”

 

Nearby three of the children were writhing on the floor. Their scents strong, sick, and beta. As he watched one rolled over and vomited.

 

The girl that had been injected first was looking green as well; her alpha scent decidedly off key and body shaking as it worked through the unnatural hormone cocktail.

 

For some reason Colin seemed to be fine.

 

There were no omegas among the five children that were injected. _Statistically there should only be a couple of us…_

 

“We have to get out of here,” Jackie rasped. “Before they come back.”

 

Damian looked around. He could see blood and a few abandoned syringes but no adults. Not even the woman he’d hamstrung. “How…?”

 

“They ran away. But we’re locked in this shed thing.”

 

One of the betas. “When will it go away? It hurts…”

 

“Let me down,” Damian said. “I need to…”

 

Colin slowly lowered him onto the floor and Damian staggered to the back of the truck to look around the four walls of the shed. Relief flooded through him as he saw the flimsy construction. “Cheap.”

 

Jackie was at his side in an instant. “Huh?”

 

“It’s a cheap shed. We can break it.”

 

“We already tried.”

 

“With the truck.”

 

“With the…” her eyes widened. “Yeah! The truck!”

 

It took ten minutes to pile the kids out of the vehicle, find some blocks of wood to tape to the pedals, and work out which key on a chain of dozens belonged in the ignition. By that time Colin was shrinking back down to normal size and starting to look as sick as the other children who were injected. Sick and keenly embarrassed as he held the rumbled remains of his clothes over his crotch.

 

“You sure you can drive?”

 

“Do not doubt me,” Damian said savagely as he dragged the driver’s seatbelt on. “If you doubt me I shall fail.”

 

One of the smaller kids stared at him. “You speak funny.”

 

He looked at them, took a shallow gulp of air, and put his hands on the wheel. “Stand back.”

 

He pushed it into first gear, dropped the clutch, and rammed on the accelerator. The shed wasn’t long and he wasn’t going any great speed by the time he made contact… but it was enough. The flimsy lock snapped, the doors burst outward with enough force to wrench off their hinges, and the windshield shattered as a pillar of metal charged through it.

 

Damian slammed on the breaks when he saw daylight, cried out as the seatbelt tightened around the wound in his chest, and blinked as the street side swam into view before him. Dark brick, compressed gardens, and washing hanging out windows. It was the area just west of Gotham Central and well within the city limits. Affordable inner city living without being budget. A nice place full of nice people.

 

He glanced in the rear view mirror to see the children pour out of the hole he’d just made in the shed. They clearly knew where they were because they all started moving a particular direction; flowing by the short fat apartment buildings and cutting remorselessly through the gardens.

 

Colin – now well and truly normal sized – wobbled over to the truck and climbed up the driver’s side door. He poked his head in the open window. “C-come on. There’s a place we can hide just over there.”

 

Damian stared at him. “I have a car.”

 

“They’ll come back soon. Hurry.”

 

“Colin. I have a car.” He let those words sink for a moment. “I-I should go home.”

 

The boy paled. “But... why?

 

“My pack…”

 

“No! You just saw what grownups do. That’s what they do, Robin. That’s what they’re like. That’s what my mum was like.”

 

Damian nodded. “Mine too.”

 

“See! You don’t have to go back. Stay with us.”

 

“My dad’s good,” Damian told him. “He’s really good.”

 

The boy was shaking his head furiously. “No. You think that but he’ll just do the same. He’ll hit you. They always hit. That’s that they do.”

 

“He won’t hit me. He’s Batman.”

 

“Batman?” Colin stopped and stared at him. “Y-you’re just saying that because you know I like superheroes.”

 

Softly. “It’s true.”

 

“No it isn’t!” Colin yelled. “Batman wouldn’t call his kid Robin!”

 

“I am Robin. My name’s Damian.”

 

Through gritted teeth. “I don’t believe you.”

 

A pause. Heavy. Strange.

 

Colin was bright red, his arms were shaking, and the thick smell of his adult scent was ridden with a sickening under current of fear. It would wear off soon. Once his body worked through the hormones it would fall back into rhythm. Whether it would be ten minutes or ten hours Damian didn’t know.

 

“You can come if you want,” Damian said. “You’re meant to be my best friend for today. You can come.”

 

Colin’s face twisted. “That’s just a made up rule you idiot.” Voice harsh, broken.

 

Damian’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. “I have to go home.”

 

“I have to go with our pack.”

 

He was shaking his head before Colin finished the sentence. “They’re not my pack.”

 

“Yeah they are!”

 

“They’re not a real pack, Colin.”

 

The boy visibly flinched. “T-they’re real to me.”

 

A pang of regret. “No, I didn’t mean…”

 

Colin dropped off the side of the truck and ran after the retreating children.

 

Damian stared after him. Sick, stunned, and strangely hurt.

 

He counted the seconds. _One. Two. Three. Four._ On the fifth Colin disappeared behind a building and was gone.

 

For an irrational moment Damian almost climbed out of the truck’s cab and staggered after him. For an even more irrational moment Damian almost cried. Then, sucking as little air as his lungs would allow, he pulled out onto the road and began weaving his way south through late morning traffic.


	21. Chapter 21

Jason sat on the sofa – his hands clenched into useless fists – and tried to make sense of what Martha was telling him.

 

He couldn’t. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t even _compute_.

 

“Both of them?” He rasped.

 

“Yes.”

 

“T-they were poisoned? Or was it a…?”

 

“They think it’s a toxin.”

 

His throat tightened. “They _think_?”

 

The woman nodded. “We still don’t know for sure. But they’re with the doctors now. They’ll find out what’s wrong with them. They’ve already slowed it down.”

 

His knuckles were starting to hurt. “I was asleep. I was right there, asleep. I’m meant to stop them getting hurt and I was…”

 

“No.” Martha reached out and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Don’t think like that, Jason. There was nothing you could have done. It wasn’t your fault.”

 

Something inside him ticked.

 

“Bullshit it wasn’t!” He shrugged off her hand. “I’m the pack alpha! They’re the omegas! I’m meant to protect them. I’m meant to guard them. I’m m-meant…” he was shaking. “ _Fuck!”_ He pushed himself onto his feet and began to pace. “What if Damian’s dog mum comes after them again? Who’s protecting them?”

 

“Both Alfred and Clark have gone to the hospital,” Martha reminded him softly; a consistent calming presence made almost homely by her gentle Midwestern accent. “Clark is the strongest of us all and Alfred can make medical decisions if things get any worse. They rang us last about an hour ago last.”

 

“Tim had just lost consciousness,” Kon croaked. “I wanted to talk to him but he… he…”

 

“Hey,” Martha stood, walked across the room, and sat beside the boy. “Shh. It’s okay. We’ll get through this, okay?”

 

The boy was huddled within the stiff embrace of a massive armchair; the same chair he’d been sitting on the day he broke the TV without ever moving a muscle. Back then he’d been cocky, arrogant, and spent more time staring at Tim’s arse than the show they were watching. Now his cheeks were blotchy, shoulders shaking, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from the TV screen dutifully displaying the morning news on mute.

 

Jason almost wished the boy was still the cocky ignorant arsehole that groped his little brother and broke his ribs. Someone he could vilify. Someone he could blame. Someone he could fight. Instead he looked as messed up as Jason felt.

 

He growled and kept pacing.

 

He needed an enemy to hit. A target to shoot. A way to save them. Something. _Anything_.

 

Dick. He needed Dick. He needed Dick to tell him it was okay. He needed to tell Dick it was okay. He needed to hold him and believe it was okay. Just for a moment.

 

“Jason,” Martha reached out and stopped him as he paced by. “It’s okay. Dr Tompkin’s is taking care of them both and Clark can stop anyone who tries to hurt them.”

 

“He didn’t stop them being poisoned _._ ”

 

“They’re safe,” she insisted.

 

“What if they do whatever they did to Clark the first time? What then?”

 

“The police…”

 

“It’s them!” Kon interrupted, grabbed the remote, and turned on the sound. It popped, fizzed, and cut in as the stiffly dressed Gotham Live news reporter turned away from his co-host and talked directly to the camera.

 

_“…first assumed Bruce Wayne was headed to the birthing centre. The truth turned out to be much worse. Bruce Wayne as well as his adopted son, seventeen year old omega Timothy Drake, seem to have been the victims of what is most likely poisoning at the hands of the terrorist organisation known as Leviathan. Leviathan has been targeting the Wayne household since the announcement of Batman Incorporated and are the prime suspects in the ten year old Damian Wayne’s disappearance. The attacks against the family has put Batman’s choice to ‘step into the light’ under heavy criticism. Vicki Vale is on scene.”_

 

Vicki Vale’s heavy winter coat looked sombre and stilling, like she was standing outside a funeral home rather than a hospital.

 

Jason’s fists tightened even further.

 

 _“Thank you Chris.”_ Vicki began. _“Here I am at Gotham General Hospital where Bruce Wayne and Timothy Drake were admitted last night. While news from inside is sketchy it seems Timothy’s condition has worsened while Bruce is stabilised but shows no sign of improvement…”_

 

“It’s okay, Conner,” Martha hugged the boy to her side. “It’s okay.”

 

_“…exactly what caused it remains a mystery.”_

 

“Why is he still getting worse? It d-doesn’t make sense,” Conner sobbed. “It doesn’t…”

 

_“…has caused a lot of controversy…”_

 

“Shh. It’s okay. He’ll be okay. I’m sure of it.”

 

_“…what the citizens of Gotham have to say.”_

 

Vicki Vale vanished to be replaced by a chain of tweets and messages pillaged of various social media sights. A presenter read them out as they appeared.

 

_“Marshall242 says: I could understand Leviathan when they were making a stand against the organisation of global pop vigilantism. But these are omegas and children under attack now.”_

 

“B-but why would B-Bruce stop getting worse?” Conner stuttered. “W-why wouldn’t Tim…?”

 

_“Peter Johnson-Ward of the Gotham Knights just posted: thoughts and prayers with the Wayne family. And people wonder why superheroes don’t tell us their true identity.”_

 

Martha. “They’ll figure it out. Don’t worry. They’ll catch it.”

_“Maddox Lawrence says: I go to school with Tim Drake. He’s always nice. You would never know his dad is a billionaire. It’s totally insane. Why [would] someone poison him? He’s seventeen, like me.”_

 

“Is Tim going to die?”

 

_“Mayor Sebastian Hady had this to say: I would like to assure the people of Gotham city they are safe and remind everyone the Wayne family has been assigned police protection. Attacks of terror against Gotham’s citizens will not go unpunished, especially against our founding family, and especially against Mr Wayne and these young boys.”_

 

“You can’t think like that Conner,” Martha said after a stretched silence. “We just need to…”

 

_“Not all agreed with these sentiments however. Maddie Wostler posted this: ‘Bruce Wayne shouldn’t have allied himself with a criminal. I bet he won’t be making that mistake again.’ While Davis Gundellah said: ‘I love how everyone’s so upset about this child and these omegas getting hurt, as if that didn’t happen to hundreds of non-rich children and omegas in Gotham every day.’”_

 

“Tim’s not going to die,” Jason growled; forcing every ounce of conviction he could into his voice. “He’s not! I won’t let him!”

 

Martha. “Jason…”

 

“No. He’s not.” At Conner. “Tim’s not going to die.” Back at Martha. “That’s what you say. That’s the truth.”

 

_“Thank you Vicki. There has also been a public outcry for Batman to come forward. Which, I’ve been lead to believe you have a take on this Sam?”_

Conner was looking at him now. Looking at him with earnest desperation. Looking _to_ him.

 

A new presenter appeared; large, well dressed, and dripping with charisma as he looked into the camera. _“Oh, Chris, I’m telling you; back in my day alphas fought alphas, face to face, no masks. This little man in a bat-suit hides behind his omegas, and his kids, and they’re getting hurt. Real big man there. If it were up to me, I’d get all of them out of there. The omegas, the kids, and the betas too. Put them into witness protection so they can’t contact Batman, or give him money, and then see how he likes them apples. AND give Bruce Wayne and his kids therapy so they can break any mate or pack bonds they have with Batman. No way should an omega stay with a mate who doesn’t protect him and their children. I mean, this isn’t the first time this family has been to hospital with an emergency this week. Something’s going on. Even rich families can be dysfunctional and have alphas who aren’t up for the challenge of taking care of the pack. If that’s what’s going on with the Wayne’s we should help them. That’s what I think.”_

_“Well-spoken th—”_

 

Jason charged across the room and pulled the TV from the wall. “That’s bullshit. That’s fucking bullshit. We can take care of them. We’re _going_ to take care of them.”

 

Conner stared at him. Stared at him like he was a leader. “H-how?”

 

“Now boys,” Martha looked nervous. “The doctors are doing their best. I’m sure…”

 

“There’s nothing to hit,” Jason tried to work through things the way Bruce would. “There is nothing to hit which means we have to think. Look at clues. Figure it out.” He tried not to show how alien the concept was to him.

 

“But they’re the detectives,” Conner muttered hopelessly. “They figure stuff out.”

 

“Yeah, well, they can’t do that right now,” Jason spoke through clenched teeth. “That means we got to do it.” A deep breath. “Okay…”

 

He’d never been a very good detective. As Robin he’d always just stood back during that part of the job and Bruce had never bothered to teach something to a kid who didn’t want to learn. As long as he had an enemy to hunt and hurt he was happy. Bruce could put clues together no one else even saw, Tim was a master of patterns, and Dick knew his forensics inside and out. But he… he’d always just been the brute. Good at making a mess: never much good at figuring one out.

 

“If… if it was a poison how did they get poisoned?” He pulled the question out of thin air.

 

 Conner was already shaking his head. “I don’t know…”

 

“Was it food?”

 

Martha. “They ate everything we ate.”

 

“Water?”

 

“We drink the same water,” she rebuffed him.

 

“Clothes? Sheets? We were on a case once where the washing powder…?”

 

“No,” she said. “All the clothes were washed together.”

 

Jason took a deep breath. _Okay_. “So, you’re telling me there is no way they were poisoned without us also being poisoned?” He muttered. “That can’t be right. There has to be something. Something they did we didn’t. Something that makes them different from us.”

 

“They’re omegas,” Conner said.

 

“That doesn’t matter!”

 

“It’s the only difference,” Kon rasped. “That’s the only difference between them and the rest of us.”

 

“No. There has to be something else.”

 

“That’s it.”

 

“No I…” he trailed off. “That’s it?”

 

Conner looked confused. “Yeah.”

 

“So… what if it _was_ in the water?”

 

Martha looked pitying. “We all drank…”

 

“Yeah. What if we all got poisoned? But it’s a kind of poison that only hurts omegas?”

 

Conner looked hopeful for a moment.

 

“There is no such poison,” the beta said gently. “We’re all humans. We have slightly different hormones but we don’t work _that_ differently.”

 

“That’s not right,” Jason protested. “Drugs work different on different castes. If I take omega suppressants I get sick.” He felt awkward and stupid wading after this idea. Like someone walking in snow shoes through territory Bruce and Tim would skip effortlessly over. But this was the only idea he had. The only enemy he could grab onto and hold. His only hope of helping his pack with two broken ribs and no enemy to fight.

 

“Check my blood,” Jason suggested. “And yours.” He pointed at Martha. “And… Alfred’s at the hospital. Why don’t they check Alfred’s? If it’s in us they can find it in us.”

 

“They don’t know what they’re looking for,” Martha tried to reason with him. “They can’t find anything wrong with Bruce’s and Tim’s blood.”

 

“Tim’s a low level omega,” Conner said. “If it was based on omega hormone Bruce should be sicker, not Tim. And if it was low amounts of omega hormones all the betas and alphas would be sick.”

 

“So why is Tim sicker?” Jason pleaded. “There has to be a reason. That’s what Bruce always says. There is always a reason. What makes Tim different from Bruce?”

 

“He’s a low level,” Conner tried. Eager, despite his grandmother’s uncertain looks, to participate in their clumsy investigation. “A-and he’s not pregnant.”

 

“There has to be another difference. A proper difference. Something that would mean he gets poisoned faster.”

 

“He’s half the weight of Bruce,” Martha suggested. “Even if Bruce wasn’t pregnant, he’s much smaller. Maybe the same amount of toxin just hurts him more because there is less of him to absorb it.”

 

It was a frustratingly reasonable suggestion. “What else?”

 

“But…”

 

“There has to be something else.” That’s what Bruce always said. But when he said it he sounded sure. He sounded strong. Jason wasn’t either of those things. “There _has_ to be.”

 

Martha looked between them. “I’m sorry boys. Sometimes we just have to wait.”

 

“No,” Conner said, surprising Jason. “No… we keep thinking.” He looked at Jason like a boy scout looking to his troop leader. “Even if we don’t think of anything we have to try.”

 

It stank of desperation; a sickeningly familiar smell.

 

With a sickening sucking sensation Jason realised he and the not-clone were in the same boat. They couldn’t sit and do nothing. They couldn’t just wait. Even if it was useless they had to _try_.

 

“How else is Tim different from Bruce?” Jason posed the question.

 

“Age,” Conner jumped right in. “He’s younger.”

 

“They’re very similar,” Martha said hopelessly. “Both are male omegas, Caucasian, and both have male alpha partners.”

 

Jason’s lips thinned. “You think it’s the alien DNA?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then their ‘partners’ aren’t relevant,” he growled.

 

“A-actually,” Conner looked between Martha and him. “We may be.”

 

Sharply. “Why?”

 

A long pause.

 

Conner took a deep breath. “Tim’s on birth control,” he said quickly. “Bruce isn’t.”

 

Jason stared at him.

 

The young alpha’s brow began to bend. “It’s a difference… I mean…”

 

“You motherfucker.”

 

“Jason!” Martha sent him a stern look. “Please. Language. It’s a good point. A very good point. Does Bruce know Tim is on any medication?”

 

“I-I don’t think so,” Conner looked at her.

 

“Good. That’s something he should know. That could be why Tim’s worsening. He’s on extra drugs his doctors don’t know about.”

 

Hope bloomed across the young alpha’s face. “You think so? You think that’s it? W-we just need to tell him.”

 

“I’ll tell him,” Jason growled as he pulled his phone from his pocket.

 

“If Tim’s awake can I…?”

 

“No,” Jason cut the other alpha off. Fucking arsehole. Fucking prick. Fucking… fucker. He woke his phone, swiped away a voice message notification, and skipped into his contact list.

 

“Bruce’s phone is off,” Martha told him. “You have to phone Clark. Do you have his number? I know his…”

 

“I have his number.” He hit call.

 

It rang five times, teetered on the edge of an answering phone, and was finally picked up.

 

The Kryptonian sounded exhausted. _“Hello?”_

 

“Hey.”

 

 _“Jason. You’re awake,”_ Clark sighed. _“Thank God. Bruce will be so happy. Hold on, I’ll put him on the line.”_

 

A thought occurred to him. “What if the doctors see you with him?”

 

 _“Officially I’m ‘Mr Wayne’s security’. Not that it matters. Doctor patient confidentiality and all. Here he is.”_ Away from the speaker. _“It’s Jason.”_

 

Jason waited while the phone was passed over.

 

Bruce sounded even worse than Clark. _“Jason. Don’t go anywhere. I need you to guard the manor. I know Dick’s still missing but…”_

Mention of the other man’s name sent a sting of pain through him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

 _“Thank you,”_ the omega breathed. _“God. Thank you.”_ He didn’t sound like he was kidding.

 

Jason wasn’t sure how he was meant to respond to that.

 

 _“I’m sorry we drugged you,”_ Bruce went on after a while. _“You needed to sleep and we thought you were going to go after Dick.”_

 

“I was,” he muttered.

 

_“I’ve lost Dick, Damian, and Tim. I can’t lose you too, Jason. Not again.”_

 

Another beat wherein Jason wasn’t sure what he was meant to say.

 

“Tell him,” Conner prompted.

 

“I… we were thinking… Tim’s still in a bad way?” Jason croaked.

 

Bruce’s voice was strained. _“We stopped his bleeding but we can’t wake him.”_

 

They were wrong. No way a little detail like the pill could explain that. This was stupid. Useless.

 

_“Jason?”_

 

“Go on,” Conner said again.

 

“I… we were thinking… Tim’s on birth control… could that…?”

 

The omega didn’t say anything. Not at first.

 

_“You’ve been thinking about this?”_

 

“I’ve been trying to solve it. Me and the not-clone.”

 

Silence

 

 _“It’s unlikely.”_ Bruce finally said in a tone of voice told him this was an idea Bruce had already thought of and dismissed. Probably among a million other ideas. All the ideas Conner and he would be able to think up if they put their heads together for years.

 

“T-that was it. Sorry it was…”

 

 _“It would help if we knew what kind of birth control he was on.”_ He didn’t know if Bruce was throwing him a bone, giving him something to do, or earnestly asking.

 

Jason looked at Conner. “What kind of birth control is he on?”

 

The boy paled. “There are different kinds?”

 

“Yes, idiot.”

 

“Jason,” Martha warned.

 

“I…” Conner looked lost. “I don’t know. He never said.”

 

Jason felt the bitter wrench of bile bubble into his throat. “In all the time you’ve been fucking him behind our backs you never cared enough to ask what he was using to stop a baby. Fucking typical.”

 

“Jason. Please.” Martha sent him a pleading look. “I understand this is a hard time but let’s try to talk to each other with a bit of civility.”

 

The not-clone looked humiliated, angry, and still keenly terrified. “No,” he croaked. “It’s not like that. He only just got it.”

 

“Bullshit.”

 

“Civil, Jason.”

 

Conner balled his hands into fists. “I’m telling you the truth. We haven’t even... _used_ it.”

 

“That’s a jok…” he trailed off. _Could it be?_ The mall. The doctor’s script. Tim waiting till he was gone to pick up the medication. _No… no it couldn’t…_ Jason had looked at the script. He’d looked right at it and seen “…Depo Provera.”

 

Bruce’s voice cut in. Urgent. _“Depo Provera? That’s a form of birth control. Usually injected.”_

 

“Injected?”

 

Conner’s eyes cleared. “He said something about it being injected.”

 

He’d been right there, he’d snatched the script from him, and he hadn’t known. He’d stopped questioning him when the kid had used some stupid bleeding line to gross him out. _Sneaky little…_

 

“Not-clone says that’s it.”

 

 _“Shit,”_ Bruce swore. _“ Shit. Okay.”_

 

“Is that…?”

 

_“It’s the worst birth control he could be given the situation. It’ll exacerbate the bleeding. It could be a contributing factor as to why he’s worsening so rapidly.”_

 

Stunned. “Really?”

 

 _“Why would he choose Depo Provera?”_ Bruce muttered. _“There are better options. Safer ones. I didn’t think…”_

 

“Does that help?” Jason asked.

 

 _“Yes,”_ Bruce told him. _“I had guessed he was on something much more standard. There is no reason for him to be on Depo Provera… unless…”_

 

A strange voice. _“Mr Wayne, what are you doing? You can’t…”_

 

 _“Touch me and I’ll make sure you never work in medicine again.”_ To Jason. _“It’s not a cure. He’s still got whatever I have in his system but at least we might be able to bring him back to my level. We won’t know for sure until we switch around his meds but it’s possible.”_

 

The look on Conner’s face told him he’d been listening and he heard. “W-we did it? We helped him?”

 

“Yeah,” Jason rasped, as shocked as the boy. “I think so…”

 

 “Oh God…” Conner buried his face in his hands. “That’s so… oh God…”

 

“Why would he pick an injection over a pill?” Jason muttered.

 

 _“No evidence,”_ Bruce answered, voice sad. _“No bar, no IUD, no pill. Nothing.”_ The omega sighed. _“He didn’t want us to find out.”_

 

The stranger. _“M-Mr Wayne. You’re bleeding on the floor. I’m sorry but I must insist on…”_

 

_“I’m sorry Jason. This arsehole is going to put me back to bed. Keep thinking.”_

 

He hung up.

 

Jason stood, swaying on his feet. No evidence? Tim had taken a riskier birth control just because it had no evidence?

 

The wave of guilt that hit him at that thought was near suffocating.

 

He was just trying to protect him. That’s all he’d ever tried to do. He’d been protecting Tim since the kid’s first heat.

 

That day had been one of the worst of his life.

 

He remembered the boy; tiny, bony, _thirteen_ and in heat. It seemed too young. Disgustingly young. But that hadn’t seemed to matter to the stray alphas he’d snatched him away from. Or the hotel manager who didn’t blink as he – an adult alpha – dragged a heating thirteen year old omega into their ‘most secure’ suite. They’d been wrapped in rags, plastic bags, anything Jason could find to try and smother the kid’s scent and hide his bright Robin costume. But that hadn’t mattered either. Despite all the press about the ‘protect the omega’ instinct, he had felt like he was the only one who cared that night. The only one who didn’t want Tim to ever cry about his first heat.

 

He stood guard all night. He kept him safe. Alive. Whole.

 

He’d kept the alphas away.

 

And that’s what he was doing with Conner.

 

Conner didn’t get it. He was just like Jason had been when he’d been drooling over Bruce; just a dumb high level dog who didn’t understand that not everything was his to take. Some things – like the kid – were too important for that.

 

Tim was more important than that. He wasn’t just a bitch to be bartered over. He’d made Wayne Manor a place Jason didn’t mind living in. He’d made the people in it feel like a family. He’d made everything okay when before it hadn’t been. Before it had been hell.

 

Tim didn’t even really remember his first heat… which was exactly what Jason wanted. Tim woke up after his heat the same happy healthy kid he’d been a couple of days before. That was all Jason was trying to preserve – trying to keep safe – the boy that had brought the pack back from the brink. His little brother.

 

Tim who was now lying in a hospital unconscious because he’d rather take a secretive injection than…

 

Jason left the room. He couldn’t stand to look at the not-clone a moment longer. He couldn’t stand to think about how he was meant to let this alpha take away the boy he’d protected from all the other alphas that would have hurt him. But he was meant to. And he would have to. And maybe he was the one hurting Tim now.

 

God, but what if Tim d—no. He would not think that. Could not think that. Tim was going to be fine. He had to be fine. Tim… had left him a message.

 

Jason saw the voice message notification on his phone again. A tiny pop up under the title ‘Tim Drake’.

 

His fingers fumbled as he dialled his answering machine.

 

 _“You have one new message,”_ a robotic voice cheerlessly informed him. _“Message received today at 1:12am.”_

 

A voice crackled over the speaker. A human voice.

 

His heart stopped.

 

Tim’s voice.

 

 _“Hey,”_ the boy rasped. _“Hey Jay, they took us to hospital. I… man I feel like shit. I’m bleeding out of my eye now too. It sucks. I hope we’re back before you wake up but in case we’re not I wanted to tell you something.”_ A pause. _“I-I’m really sorry, Jay. I told Dick about the rings. About me helping you buy them. But I made it sound really bad. I didn’t mean to. It just kind of slipped out. Then he left and I think he’s really upset.”_

 

“Kid…” Jason muttered. “No…”

 

The message kept playing. _“I know you told me not to tell him. I know I promised I wouldn’t. I messed up. I’m sorry I…” he sighed. “Man, I’m screwing this up. I hope we get back before you wake up and you don’t hear this. Though I probably won’t do any better the second time around.”_

 

The message ended.

 

Jason stood, phone against his ear, numb.

 

Dick knew about the rings. Was that why he left without telling anyone? Was that why he wasn’t in contact?

 

His fist tightened around the phone and with a ragged hiss he threw it down onto a padded chair. _Stupid! So fucking stupid!_ He should have got the rings, he should have told Dick Tim had picked them, he should have… why did they mean so much? They were bands of metal. Why were they such a big deal? His world was falling apart; his pack omegas were lying in a hospital beds, Dick was missing, and somehow he was meant to care about two bits of gold? Tim was dying worrying about those stupid meaningless rings.

 

Why did Dick make such a huge deal over this wedding? What did a wedding matter? He didn’t care about the wedding. He just wanted to _be_ married. Just wanted Dick to be his… to stay his. Isn’t that what being married was meant to be? Just… a promise that he would stay?

 

“You prick,” he rasped. “You prick. You always run away when shit gets hard. You always do. You always…” He screwed up his eyes. His fault. It was all his fault. He should have been honest with Dick, he should have been there for Tim, he should have protected his pack. “You need to come back… I need you to come back… I need…”

 

A crash snapped him back to the moment.

 

It had come from near the front of house.

 

_An enemy. A target. A fight._

 

He spun on his heel and charged through the hall; a savage growl ripping out of his throat as his body rapidly shifted gears to attack mode; the flood of alpha hormone strong enough he could almost taste it. Conner bolted from the other room with a roar of his own and fell into formation behind him.

 

They burst out the front door and skidded to a stop.

 

A large white truck sat in the middle of the lawn. Judging from the wreckage behind it and the skid marks through the grass it had sped through the main gate, sideswiped a tree, and spun out; barely missing the fountain. By some cosmic accident it hadn’t overbalanced or tipped over at any point throughout the crash.

 

A police contingent was coming up behind.

 

“You think you can break a bad guy’s ribs this time?”

 

“God yeah.”

 

They raced down the stairs, were across the garden before the police cruisers had even made it to the gate, and pulling open the driver’s side door. It came off at the hinges.

 

They froze. Fell out of their aggressive stances.

 

“Damian?”

 

“Todd?’ The boy peered out at them. “Kent?”

 

“Are you…?”

 

Damian tried to climb out of the truck, wobbled alarmingly as he took to his feet, and fell. Jason caught him, grunting as his ribs screamed in protest.

 

The boy’s skin was covered in sweat and ice cold, his hands were smeared with blood, and his clothes reeked of the sewers.

 

“Fuck kid. What the hell happened?”

 

Confused. “I crashed.”

 

“I got that.”

 

“You did?” Damian looked over his shoulder as the police cars moved into the driveway, saw the scraped tree, and frowned down at the ripped up lawn. “Oh.” His eyes slipped back to Jason; feverishly bright. “Don’t tell father.”


	22. Chapter 22

Dr. Leslie Thompkins stood at the foot of his bed and waited. Her steel grey hair was pulled back into a stern pony tail, doctor’s coat had been abandoned in favour of pale pink scrubs, and reading glasses tethered to a clear plastic cord looped around her neck.

 

“No,” Bruce told her.

 

“Bruce…” Clark reached out to touch his hand. “Please.”

 

He kept his eyes aimed forward; locked onto a spot just above Leslie’s left shoulder. “No.”

 

Leslie didn’t stare, scowl, or argue. She’d done all that already. Instead she pulled out of piece of paper from the back of her clipboard, snapped it once, and held it out for him. “You’re going to need to sign this.”

 

He looked at her.

 

“It’s a declaration that you’re going against medical advisement,” she explained.

 

“Give me a pen.”

 

“Bruce,” Clark sounded desperate. “Can’t we just talk about this?”

 

“We’ve talked.” Bruce bit back a wave of weakness and pulled over the wheeled dinner table. It could over hang the hospital bed but couldn’t fit over both him and his belly. With a grunt he rolled onto his side as Leslie walked over and laid down the single sheet of paper and a pen on the narrow surface.

 

“We haven’t talked,” Clark protested. “You’ve just told me ‘no’ and ‘I’ve made my decision.’”

 

“It’s my body, Clark.”

 

Quickly. “It’s _our_ daughter.”

 

He picked up the pen.

 

“Mr Wayne,” Leslie said softly; one more last ditch attempt to change his mind. “As your doctor I can’t stop you signing that piece of paper and as your friend I will respect your decision if you do… but you’re being an idiot.”

 

Low. “I’m saving my daughter’s life.”

 

“She’s ready to come out,” Clark said gently, fingers interweaving with his. “You don’t need to do this.”

 

“I can count,” Bruce growled. “Thirty five weeks is not ‘ready.’ I was born at thirty five weeks and I almost died.”

 

“Bruce,” Leslie abandoned any semblance of formality. “Times are different now. Medicine has come a long way. You’re not a failure if you deliver a premature baby.”

 

“Then why didn’t you let me birth her last week?”

 

“You weren’t bleeding all over the place for one,” the doctor said dryly.

 

Bruce fixed her with a merciless stare. “She needs more time.”

 

“Bruce,” Leslie didn’t flinch or back down. “You’re sick.”

 

“She’s not,” he reminded her. It was the same argument they had the first time she’d brought this proposal to his bedside, but he would have it again if that’s what it took. “Her circulatory system is different to mine, she’s Kryptonian, and she’s shown no sign of distress,” he rattled off his reasons. “If this thing only effects omegas there is very little chance of it affecting her.” A quick look between them. “She’s not being hurt by this.”

 

“But you are,” Clark begged. “If we take her out we can put you on the same medication as Tim.”

 

Bruce frowned and looked to the side. They were in a large private room with an impractically decadent bathroom and a flat screen hanging off the far wall. One of the nurses who seemed especially excited about having the ‘founding family’ staying in the hospital had hooked up a ward curtain over the blinds so – when closed – absolutely no light would creep in from the outer hall.

 

Beside his bed, behind a tangle of monitoring equipment for both him and the baby, was another bed. In it lay Tim.

 

The boy’s wrists looked frighteningly narrow, skin alabaster, and face hidden behind a fogged oxygen mask.

 

“Tim isn’t awake,” Bruce muttered.

 

“He’s getting better,” Clark insisted. “You’re not.”

 

“We’ll put your baby in the ICU,” Leslie said. “She’ll be fine.”

 

“No,” he shook his head venomously. “I’m not leaving my baby in the ICU. That’s what she wants.”

 

Leslie frowned. “That’s what who wants?”

 

“Talia,” Clark explained. “Leviathan. He thinks they’re here.”

 

He shot Clark a look. “They _are_ here.”

 

“He also thinks they impersonated my ex-girlfriend to poison him.” A petty jab. Born off stress and dripping in disbelief.

 

Low. “I admit it would be hard to impersonate Lois Lane’s unique brand of egotism but it could be possible.” An equally petty retaliation. “I’m not ruling it out.”

 

Clark’s jaw shifted as he turned back to him. “Bruce, why would Talia…?”

 

“You said she wanted me,” he said, finally looking at his mate and snapping the conversation back on target. “She wants to mate me, breed me. That means this – whatever this is – won’t kill me or do anything that might harm my reproductive abilities.”

 

“But wh—?”

 

“ _Think_ , Clark,” he hissed. “The reason why we’re here is because Talia designed it that way. This is her plan. _This_ is stage five. She wants us to panic and take our daughter out in an environment where I can’t check everyone’s history – where any visitor or nurse could be an assassin – and then she can kill her without damaging me.”

 

“All the staff here are safe.” Leslie assured him.

 

He was shaking his head before she finished. “You don’t know that.”

 

“I do.”

 

“No you don’t. You just know what you’ve been told. What the computer’s told you. You think Talia can’t change that? You think Talia can’t create and erase people whenever she wants? This is Leviathan. Read the news and you’ll only know _half_ of what she can do.”

 

He sounded delusional, paranoid. He knew he did. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t care if, at the end of this, the media started reporting on another Wayne who’d lost their mind: the curse of Mad Anthony Wayne returned to claim another generation. If that was what they wanted to peddle, fine. All he cared about was keeping his family safe and away from the woman who would destroy them. The woman who he would not underestimate again.

 

He just prayed he would succeed. It had been a long time since he went up against a supervillain like this; one which was defeating him at every pass. And this time he couldn’t take off the cowl and retreat for some downtime. This time, in ugly reversal, his enemy was hunting him.

 

The only way to get out of her crosshairs was to act rather than react. To work out what the trap was and step back.

 

“I’ll guard her,” Clark pleaded. “If you get the C-section I can keep her safe. Please Bruce, you’re getting worse.”

 

“No,” he growled. “You’re not cutting me open.” He signed the bottom of the page with a spiky flourish. “Talia’s not getting my daughter.”

 

Leslie took the piece of paper without a word, snapped it back onto her clipboard, and left. He could practically taste the disappointment pouring off her; the frustration. That was okay. He could live with being a disappointment if it meant keeping his daughter safe.

 

_I’ve got you, pup. I’ve got you._

 

Clark bowed his head onto the side of the bed and squeezed Bruce’s hand; a hopeless cling.

 

Bruce returned the squeeze. “Trust me, Clark.”

 

“I trust that you think you’re doing the right thing,” the alpha rasped, forehead still down on the bed. “I trust that you think you’re saving our daughter. I trust you. But you’re wrong. You’re hurting yourself. You could be hurting her.” Voice thick. “You could die.”

 

“Talia isn’t going to kill me,” he swallowed the froth of spit and blood that filled his mouth. “She’ll kill all of us but she won’t kill me. That’s an advantage I’m not going to throw away. I need to stop playing by her plan, dancing to her strings.”

 

Clark jerked up like he’d been stung. “This isn’t a game, Bruce!”

 

He turned away from the other man.

 

He wouldn’t fight. He wouldn’t yell. Not right now.

 

For once he wouldn’t be that man.

 

“Bruce,” Clark tried again, softer. “Talia isn’t an evil genius. This might not be part of her plan, or she could have made a mistake. She has before. She tried to kill me and instead she… I…” Clark audibly swallowed. When he spoke again his voice was strained and shaking. “She miscalculated.”

 

“Miscalculated?” He echoed. “She took you. She took my son. She’s ripped away my pack’s defences one by one. Beating us at every turn.”

 

“No it’s…” Clark began.

 

“She’s destroyed Batman Inc.” Bruce heard himself croak, interrupting his mate. “After a week of those robots flying through Gotham no one’s going to support or trust us. Especially since we hadn’t finalised the contract with my company yet. I don’t even have a Batman anymore. She took that away too. Now my pack’s an inch away from death. All in two weeks, Clark. Two weeks.” He held tight to the hand in his. “That’s not a miscalculation.”

 

“You don’t know that all that is connected. How much if this is just luck on her part? How much of this has she really planned?”

 

“Enough. More than enough.” He looked back over at where Tim was lying. Thin, white, and still bruised from his accident days before. “I’m not going to let her win anymore. I’m not going to let her hurt our family again.”

 

Quickly. “You’re letting her hurt you.”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“No, you’re not.” Clark cut straight through the lie. “You’re still bleeding and Alfred told me you’ve been on bedrest all week but they haven’t been able to keep you in bed. Now you can barely sit up.”

 

“I’m sitting up.” He was propped up at best.

 

“You’re sick.” Clark’s gaze was penetrating and painful.

 

Bruce tried to meet it. Couldn’t.

 

“What Tim’s on might not be perfect,” the alpha added, “but at least he’s not bleeding anymore. At least he’s improving. You’re still sick and getting sicker. If you have the C-section she can go into an incubation chamber and you can go onto the same medication as Tim.”

 

This wasn’t going the way he wanted it. “I need to ask you to do something,” he said softly.

 

The alpha shook his head. “Don’t change the subject.”

 

“I’m not. I need to ask you to do something.”

 

A pleat formed between Clark’s brows. He didn’t say anything.

 

“If I fall unconscious…”

 

Clark’s eyes widened. “No! No, I won’t!”

 

“…I need you to make sure they don’t do the surgery,” he finished anyway.

 

“I won’t,” he said again, firmer.

 

“I need you to,” Bruce pressed.

 

“I’m not going to let you die,” Clark told him.

 

“I’m not going to die,” he countered. “And I’m not going to let our daughter die.”

 

“Have the C-section,” the alpha begged. “Please. I destroyed the amulet Talia used to defeat me. I can protect our daughter. But not if you’re not there to lead me. Not if you’re unconscious or dead because you didn’t get the drugs you needed.”

 

“Clark,” he held up his free hand. Stopping him. “I’m not going to die.” He said it one more time. Slowly. “I’m not.” His voice was even, almost flat. It was the way he’d been sounding for a little while. There had been too much fear, anger, and violence this last week for him to add to it by letting it out of himself. “But I need you on my side here.”

 

“I won’t,” Clark said again. “If you’re unconscious I won’t stop them from getting her out so they can give you what they’re giving Tim. I’ll get the Justice League in if it means keeping her safe.”

 

A surge of unease flooded through him. “You can’t rely on the Justice League.”

 

“We’ve always relied on the Justice League.”

 

“Not in situations like these…” the lie sounded flimsy to his own ears.

 

Clark sent him a flat look. “You don’t want them coming to Gotham. At a time like this you want me to trust you but you’re still clinging to those ridiculous rules.”

 

“It’s not Gotham.” He told him. “We can’t rely on them. What if there’s a disaster? They’re not pack. They don’t know this kind of warfare. They don’t know Talia. They’ll draw more attention, perhaps supervillain attention. They’re…”

 

“What’s the real reason?”

 

Bruce scowled. “Those are real reasons.”

 

“No,” Clark shook his head. “The only reason to give multiple reasons like that is you’re searching for one I’ll accept. You’re not telling me the truth.” A pause. “You taught me that one, Bruce.”

 

Damn it, he had.

 

“What’s the truth?” Clark pushed. “Why don’t you want them here?”

 

A pause.

 

The question bounced around inside his skull like an echo.

 

“I don’t know,” he answered; raw and honest. “I… I just don’t…” he sagged back into the stiff plastic hospital pillow. “I don’t want them here. I don’t want them to…” a leaf of understanding began to unfold inside him. Small. Withered. A piece of something he thought he’d left behind months ago. “I… I’m the omega…” he said the words as he realised they were true. “I don’t want them to rescue me…”

 

Clark didn’t insult him by saying they wouldn’t think of him differently for asking for help. He knew that. Clark knew he knew that. They both knew it was an irrational fear and stating that wasn’t going to do anything to dispel it.

 

“I… I don’t want them to see me like this…” Bruce added, still speaking as he realised it.

 

“Pregnant?”

 

He shook his head. “At the mercy of an alpha. An alpha that ra—that used me. Hurt me.”

 

Clark didn’t say anything. He just studied him. Careful.

 

Bruce swallowed. He’d almost said that word. That gross, inaccurate, stupid word. That word he would not attach to his last sexual encounter with Talia. That word Clark insisted on attaching to it. That word that would inequitably define him by the wretched image of omegahood he’d fought his life to set himself apart from.

 

Again. “I don’t want them to see… me… Talia…” his voice was tightening up; losing the calm monotone. “They would ask questions, and they would get answers. They would know what happened and it would be an ‘oh’ moment. They would think ‘that explains him’ and…”

 

“No, Bruce, no…” Clark’s hand tightened around his. “No.”

 

“And it would be something they know but can’t talk about when I’m there,” he added relentlessly, refusing to stem the strange stream of consciousness bubbling up through his mouth. “I’m the omega. _The_ omega. If I become _that_ omega…”

 

“ _That_ omega?” Clark echoed.

 

“…then that’s all I’ll be.” It was an alien confession. Like his lips belonged to a stranger and were working on their own behalf. But, he knew with a sickening tug, it was true. It was why he didn’t want the Justice League to help them despite the obvious logical advantage their aid would bring.

 

“Bruce…” Clark leant forward to pull their bodies together.

 

Bruce let him do it but didn’t help assemble the awkward embrace. He didn’t have the energy, let alone the will, after hearing what he’d just said.

 

Again, Clark understood enough not to assure him of what he already knew. He understood enough not to say anything at all. The simple skin on skin contact was what he offered in comfort, as was the ever warm embrace of Clark’s scent: wholesome, unwavering, safe... _mate_. Bruce turned his face and buried it in Clark’s shoulder, inhaling sharply.

 

God, he’d missed that scent.

 

“I can only tell you what I’m going to do,” Clark said after a while. “I’m not going to stop Alfred approving a C-section if you go unconscious. I can’t do that, Bruce. And – if we need it – I’m going to call the Justice League.”

 

“They’re not guard dogs to stand over a crib,” he muttered, not lifting his face out of his mate’s shoulder. “They have their own lives, their own disasters. You know you can only call them if Talia attacks up front and in force. They need a concrete enemy to fight. It’s what they are.”

 

It was an acknowledgement rather than a protest and it wasn’t a lie. He’d been right when he said the Justice League weren’t used to this kind of warfare. Messages hidden in love poetry, symbolic traps, and unidentifiable poisons from an unknown source. Unless Talia changed her tactic and attacked with a full frontal assault – something he had thought she was going to do before the poison move was played – then the league’s training and skills wouldn’t help them.

 

And he couldn’t strategize with the league card. If they pulled it, it was wild. If they called for league backup it was never sure who would show up. The design of the league always meant someone would be on call but the teams that would appear were wildly varied; a far cry from their early days when it was just the seven of them.

 

Or the even earlier days when it was just him and Clark. Back when he knew nothing about the alien and Clark knew nothing about him. Young reluctant allies barely old enough to own the title ‘man’ they each tacked onto the end of their names. Back then if someone had told him he would one day be having a baby with Superman he would have laughed. But, back then, if someone had told him he was about to adopt a boy from a circus he would have laughed too.

 

“I’m doing the right thing, Clark. Perhaps not with the…” he swallowed the flood of unhappiness that shot through him. “…the League. But, I am when it comes to her.” He put a hand on his belly. “I’m keeping her safe. I know I am.”

 

The girl wriggled under his fingers.

 

Again. “I know I am.”

 

The door opened.

 

Judging by the way Clark jerked the man hadn’t been listening and hadn’t expected the intrusion. Bruce reached out and turned Clark’s face away from the door. Clark wasn’t wearing his glasses and the position he was in now didn’t look much like that of a security guard. If a nurse did come in, it was important they didn’t see Clark’s face. Despite everything, Clark’s identity as Superman as well as his standing as his mate was still something they needed to protect.

 

Jason walked in. A third of his face shadowed with persistent bruises, chin lined with spiky regrowth, and bulky leather jacket thrown over the shirt he’d put him to sleep wearing.

 

Bruce stared. “Jason?” He hissed. “I told you to stay at the ma—”

 

Martha came in behind him; plaid shirt tucked into bright blue jeans. Behind her Conner appeared and made an immediate bee line across the room to Tim’s bedside where he gingerly touched the sleeping omega. Bruce barely registered the movement. He couldn’t, not just then.

 

He thrashed out of Clark’s embrace, swung his legs off the side of the bed despite a wave of debilitating weakness, and staggered across the room; monitors and IV towers teetering along behind him.

 

In front of Martha, being pushed along in an oversized wheelchair, was Damian. The boy was hooked up to a cluttered IV tower of his own, was wearing a tent like hospital gown, and looked terrified as he approached. “Father.”

 

Bruce fell to his knees – aware somewhere in the back of his mind that Clark was beside him and supporting him – and wrapped his arms around the boy.

 

Damian stiffened in his crushing embrace, shook, and fell into it with a rasped hiccup of breath.

 

Something happened then. Something that hit both of them at the same time. Something that drove them to act without forethought on nothing but a raw tug of instinct. Bruce pushed a hard kiss onto the top of Damian’s skull and tipped his head back. Damian, caught in the same mindless motion, rubbed his brow against his omega gland; marking himself with Bruce’s scent.

 

Something inside him clicked.

 

He and Damian had a parent/child bond for a while. A slow burn awareness of each other that was growing little by little every day. But, if their bond was a plant, in that moment it flowered. Brought to full life by a timeless universal motion of an omega and their child.

 

Jason stared down at them. Eyes suddenly impossibly dark.

 

It was the same action Bruce had violently denied to share with him as a boy. The exclusively omega motion of a parental bond. Something Dick with two very close beta parents never really knew, wanted, or sought… but something Jason had been raised with, persistently reached after, and had never gotten from Bruce.

 

Damian started to cry – small smothered sobs marred with an unnatural persistent scrape on every exhale – just as Leslie walked in flanked by two nurses.

 

“Bruce! Get away from him!”

 

Growled. “Why can’t my son breathe?”

 

“He’s got an infection in his left lung,” the doctor told him as she shouldered Martha aside to grab the wheelchair. “It’s not highly contagious but in your state I’m not willing to take that risk.” She tried to pull him away.

 

He held firm. “I want him here.”

 

“No.”

 

“My company can help provide portable quarantine units if the hospital can’t manage it,” Bruce growled. “He’s one of us. He stays with us.”

 

“We don’t need a quarantine unit. We can give him a room.”

 

“You do. He’s going to be sharing this one.”

 

One of the nurses quickly saw this debate was probably going to last a while. He scampered to the cabinets, came back, and popped a medical mask on Damian. It wasn’t much but it didn’t inhibit the boy’s already laboured breathing.

 

When Leslie spoke again she was sceptical, annoyed, and not trying to hide it. “How long would it take to get this unit here and set up?”

 

“Ten minutes.”

 

She blinked in surprise but quickly composed herself. “If you can do it in ten minutes then we’ll use it. Until then this boy is going down to paediatrics.”

 

“No,” Bruce growled. “He’s not.” To Jason. “Find Alfred. He went to get lunch down the hall. He has Fox’s number.”

 

“He’s on his way back,” Clark volunteered the information, no doubt stolen from peering through walls.

 

“I can do it,” Martha jumped up to the plate.

 

Leslie watched the other woman leave and sighed. “You’re never going to be easy patient, are you Mr Wayne?”

 

Without releasing the grip he had on his son. “Are you ever going to be an ‘easy’ doctor, Leslie?”

 

“Perhaps not,” she ceded. “Now get a mask on and get back on your bed. I won’t take him away but you should not be on your feet.”

 

The nurse scuttled away to retrieve a second mask and loop it across his face from ear to ear. He pressed his brow against Damian’s once more and made sure to look into the boy’s eyes.

 

“I’m sorry, Father. I didn’t mean to tell her,” the boy’s confession bubbled up like bile. “I started it. I brought Leviathan here. It’s all my fault.”

 

“It doesn’t matter how she found out. It doesn’t. She would have found out anyway.”

 

“But…”

 

“What matters is you came back.” He pulled Damian back, held him at arm’s length, and fixed the boy with a firm stare. “Don’t ever run away like that again, okay? Don’t ever do it.”

 

Behind the boy’s mask he couldn’t see what his mouth or the rest of his face was doing. But he could see his eyes. Huge, icy blue, and strangely shrunken into his skull. When he’d cried he hadn’t produced any tears, likely due to what looked like dehydration, but his lids were red from the attempt.

 

“I won’t.”

 

 _Son. His son. His…_ Bruce looked for Jason.

 

The alpha was across the room, back to him, beside Tim. In an odd twist of events he had neither shouldered Conner aside nor had the boy refused to make room for him at the omega’s beside.

 

He looked at Clark.

 

His mate was beside him, eyes flicking between Damian and him, clearly aware that something had just taken place between them but obviously not quite sure as to the specifics.

 

He put his hand on the side of Damian’s face, just to feel him one more time.

 

“You’re home, okay? This is where you belong. With me. Okay?”

 

“O-okay.”

 

“You’re my boy, okay? I…” a brief surge of trepidation quickly crushed down. “…love you, okay?”

 

Damian blinked, suddenly looking on the verge of tears again, and nodded. He didn’t say another word.

 

“Clark?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You’re going to need to help me back to bed,” he admitted quietly.

 

Clark reached out as Leslie wheeled Damian – still wheezing on each breath – to his bedside. The two nurses had left for a moment and Clark stole the opportunity to pick him up one armed and zip him back onto the mattress. He tried not to show how much of a relief it was to slump back down onto the waterproofed square of foam.

 

Once he was down Leslie came over with a tissue and wiped some blood off his face without permission or apology. He let her, unaware that he’d started actively bleeding again. Thankfully most of the blood this time looked dark: old. He hoped that was a sign that Talia’s poison was reaching a plateau. He was weak, which is what she wanted, but he was not dead. That was her plan. It had to be.

 

“Damian,” he spoke to the boy still sitting tiny in the massive throne of the wheelchair. “What happened after Clark left you?” He needed to patch some holes in the story. He needed to find out whatever he could… in case it was part of her plan. “You didn’t come back.”

 

“I tried.”

 

“He crashed a crime scene into the manor after getting mixed into the south side gang of street kids and picked up by some human traffickers using hormone shots,” Jason reported: stiff and to the point like he’d been taught. His back was still facing Bruce.

 

Damian looked surprised.

 

“He was delirious when he arrived,” Jason added, gruffer. “He said everything on the way here. Barely managed to shut him up in the ER when he was telling a nurse his name was Robin.”

 

Bruce looked back at Damian. Softly. “I didn’t know there was still a south side gang of street kids.”

 

Damian shook his head. “I think they’re actually a puppy pack…”

 

Bruce didn’t interrupt him as the boy took the lead and began to slowly tell the story. It took hours for him to work through it in its entirety. He’d been found in the sewer system by a roaming foster care runaway, survived the night due to the unwitting help of the street kids, and had barely escaped the human traffickers. More relevantly; he’d seen no signs of Dick, hadn’t come across Talia again since he ran away from the docks, and had slipped through the fingers of the robots with relative ease; the massive machines not equipped to find someone as small and good at disappearing as Damian.

 

“Bruce?”

 

He would have to fix that. The robots wouldn’t surpass humans in his lifetime but he could make smaller more stealth orientated ones that would give him the edge in hunting and tracking people with the same skills as his family.

 

“Bruce are you…?”

 

He neglected to say exactly how he escaped the human traffickers, the sudden lack of detail to his storytelling hinting at something kept secret, but it was an avenue of questioning Bruce didn’t have the energy to push at that moment. He didn’t have much energy at all.

 

“Bruce, up here.”

 

He grunted in annoyance as someone flashed some lights in his eyes but couldn’t will his limbs off the bed. Leslie was standing over him, her lips moving. Alfred was at his other side. Somewhere in the middle of them both he saw Clark looking both tortured and fiercely determined. He tried to figure out what that look meant - knew it was something important - but couldn't.

 

He was too tired. Just too…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked the chapter guys! Things are really heating up now and I promise we'll hit the climax VERY soon. It's going to be intense (hopefully).
> 
> I know I've already pushed this down your guys throat once before but I would really love it if you could check out my webseries now that it's up in it's entirety: [A Plague on Both Your Houses](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkn2x907RnmMTaOORFzvIyLRrps93kfGv) . I promise it's good and if you've liked what I've created here you might just like what I've created over there. :D


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter with some heavier themes creeping in here and there. Please read with caution.

Dick never found Talia.

 

Wherever she hid after vanishing from the docks was deep enough and dark enough no amount of digging could unearth her. Not that he didn’t try. He threatened, interrogated, and hunted down into the festering bowls of the city. He bribed, begged, and bought information from the most twisted beings Gotham gave birth to. He hacked into everything he could and called in favours to hack everything he couldn’t. None of it mattered. None of it led to the woman who had killed Damian. None of it found Talia.

 

Leviathan was a name that was being whispered from the darkest alleyway as often as it was being shouted from the media towers but no one had any true connections to it. If the man-bats and Batman Inc. robots weren’t still terrorising citizens one could almost believe Leviathan was a myth. A nightmare.

 

Dick wasn’t one hundred percent sure it wasn’t. Sleep and awake seemed like arbitrary terms. Two sides of an ever spinning coin. His conscious and subconscious overlapping in a broth of diluted awareness that lost more of its shape and colour the longer he searched.

 

Perhaps Damian wasn’t dead. Perhaps he was dead. Perhaps he was being punished. Perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps, if he waited long enough, Jason would come and find him. Maybe even fuck him. But, perhaps if he kept looking, he would find her.

 

And when he found her he would kill her.

 

It was an errant childish fantasy as wretched and pathetic as his leadless search.

 

He never found her. He never killed her. He never even came close.

 

Instead, she found him.

 

It happened all at once. He’d been sitting behind a gargoyle on the Old Wayne Tower lost somewhere a little closer to sleep and awake when a swarm of man-bats surged up from the streets and engulfed him. He didn’t remember fighting back. He didn’t remember even reaching for his weapons. All he remembered was a sudden sickening fear as his feet left the rooftop below him.

 

Then nothing.

 

“…agent of Batman Incorporated, My Lady. Our scouts spotted him near the Iceburg Longue almost twenty hours previous but only found him again forty two minutes ago on the Old Wayne Tower.”

 

_“A Batman Incorporated agent in Gotham, Ubu?”_

 

“Yes, My Lady.”

 

_“There is no such thing. My beloved is far too territorial for that. It is a Robin.”_

 

Uncertainly. “It does not dress as a Robin.”

 

_“But it is all the same.”_

 

Dick’s awareness slowly began to make sense of the two voices talking above him. One heavily accented and male. The other crackling over a tinny speaker and undeniably female.

 

“But, My Lady…”

 

_“It is male, correct?”_

 

“Yes.”

 

_“Dark hair? Fair skin?”_

 

“Yes.”

 

 _“It is a Robin,”_ the voice insisted. _“Now the question becomes which one. Is it alpha, beta, or omega?”_

 

“It has no scent.”

 

Amused. _“Wash it, Ubu. It will. Once you find out inform me. If it is the omega then we have made a critical mistake and we need to recalculate. If it is the alpha please keep him contained; we are old friends and I would like to talk once all this is over. If it is the beta kill it.”_

 

Dick’s body began to crank back into gear as his brain processed those words. He moved just enough to learn that his legs were bound from knee to ankle and wrists locked together with something that felt like handcuffs but heavier.

 

“What should be done with it if it is an omega?” The first voice – a voice coming from terrifyingly close – rumbled.

 

 _“Oh…”_ a thoughtful pause. _“Keep it. I know father rather enjoyed the idea of the little thing despite its poor rank. He might like it as a gift to lighten up his confinement. Once we remove its ability to bear of course.”_

 

“Yes, My Lady.”

 

_“Good. And Ubu…”_

 

“Yes, My Lady?”

 

_“If it is the beta please do not dispose of the body. Grayson is of low rank and a known sexual deviant. I find it hard to believe such a man ever served a true purpose in life but in death he could be used to damage our enemy’s moral.”_

 

“Yes, My Lady.”

 

The line went dead with a static pop.

 

Dick slowly opened his eyes and blinked up at him. Ubu was large enough to be mistaken for Bane, had tattoos running up and down his arms, and moved with the lethal predatory grace of a trained killer. He was also a high level alpha and watching Dick with steely black eyes, not at all surprised to see him awake.

 

Bitter. “Lord Ra’s never ordered me to ‘wash’ his enemies.”

 

A sting of hope fluttered through him. “You don’t need to wash me.”

 

“What is your caste?”

 

“Alpha,” he lied.

 

The man sucked angrily at his teeth. “I might have believed you if you’d told me you were the omega.”

 

Quickly. “I’m not the omega.”

 

“You’re the alpha?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Prove it.”

 

Dick’s stomach lurched. Jason. He was pretending to be Jason. What would Jason say in this situation? The answer came to him without a second thought. “I’m not knotting my hand for you, homo.”

 

Ubu’s lips twitched. “You do not look like an alpha to my eyes.”

 

“Then you’re an idiot,” Dick tried to mimic the way Jason would growl as he talked. The way his top lip would peel back slightly when he was angry or threatened. The way his shoulders would twitch like a shark just before a feeding frenzy. “And your ‘Lady’ is an even bigger one.”

 

The man didn’t say anything. Didn’t object.

 

“I thought Leviathan was supposed to be a threat. A real threat. But you’re not, are you,” he went on as his brain desperately tried to recall Alfred’s lessons on how to act like an alpha. He’d been fifteen at the time and treated it more like a game than a skill that may one day save his life.

 

_“No no, Master Richard. Remember what I told you? Don’t try to make yourself appear taller. You look like a beta trying to be an alpha. You need to keep your chin down, shoulders forward. Alphas hunch. Like they’re coiled to spring.”_

_“Maybe alpha-me has good posture?”_

_“Try to say that again, but with less inflection and more force. Don’t ask. State.”_

He’d made no attempt to. _“Maybe alpha-me has good manners?”_

 

That was the moment Alfred had given up with a weary sigh. _“Maybe, Master Dick. Maybe.”_

 

“If you were a threat you’d know who I was,” Dick continued, making sure to lower his chin over his neck and temper the variation in his voice. “You would know what this costume meant and what my secret identity was. But you don’t. You don’t even know that the beta is Batman. And Batman doesn’t carry guns.” Guns which he could still feel weighing on his hips; kept on his person no doubt due to the belt’s defensive measures. If he could just get a hand free…

 

Ubu regarded him. Eyes as cold and dark as the cement room they were in. “What’s your name?”

 

“Jason Todd.”

 

To his shock and horror the medieval looking assassin pulled out a smart phone and effortlessly dropped the name into a search engine. The Wayne family was famous enough the truth he was looking for popped up without him having to open a link. “Todd died when he was fifteen.”

 

“Yeah.” He quickly recomposed himself. “I did. You want to ask your ‘Lady’ why she brought me back? I’ve never really been able to figure it out.”

 

Ubu’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the walking corpse that fell into the pit?”

 

Dick stared for a moment. Walking corpse? “Yeah.”

 

Ubu snorted. “My Lord Ra’s should have never let your soulless existence continue long enough for you to steal back life.”

 

Dick smothered the relief and confusion that threatened to show on his face. Ubu believed he was an alpha. He believed he was Jason. No matter whatever else it was Ubu believed Jason to be he’d been given his orders. As long as he was Jason he had time. As long as he was Jason his head stayed on his body for a little while longer. He just needed keep being Jason. “Fuck your Lord. And your Lady too.”

 

A foot thumbed down onto his chest. “Do not, deadling, insult the Lord Ra’s al Ghul who shall live forever. I serve his daughter by his order and I shall serve him again when her petty war is through and the prison that holds him rots away.”

 

Dick pulled his face into what he hoped resembled Jason’s angry glower and carefully tested his bonds. His legs he worked out were held with a thin chain that connected to the cuffs on his wrists. Simple but effective and far tricker to escape from than the duct tape and zip ties criminals were fond of restraining him in. He would need time alone to break out of them. Time alone it didn’t look like Ubu was going to give him.

 

If he was going to do this in the man’s presence he needed a distraction.

 

“Why do you bend and scrape to her?” He asked, filling the air with the sound of his voice as he carefully brought his hand to his belt.

 

“She is my Lady.”

 

“Why do you serve her if you don’t like her?”

 

“Why did you?”

 

Dick stopped. Stared. “…what?”

 

The assassin glared down at him. “You are not the alpha Robin.”

 

He quickly tried to back pedal his mistake. “I am.”

 

“You are not.”

 

“I am!”

 

“You’re the beta.”

 

“I’ve already told you. The beta’s Batman.”

 

Ubu didn’t break a beat. “The omega then.”

 

“I ain’t no bitch.” The words sounded thick and strange in his mouth, words he’d never uttered and did so now with a clumsy parody of Jason’s ragged Narrow’s dialect. A poor and grossly stereotypical impersonation of the man he loved. “You know I ain’t. You want to wash me to prove it? Or do you want to see me naked? That’s it, isn’t it, you sick fuck.”

 

Ubu’s stare was unreadable.

 

“You don’t get to touch me.”

 

“No,” the man rumbled. “You save that perversion for the Lady.”

 

Dick’s fingers were in his belt and around the base of a lock pick. They stopped.

 

“No.”

 

The man’s gaze was black. “You deny it.” Not a question.

 

“I would never do that.” Speaking for Jason. “Never.”

 

Ubu looked down at him.

 

“I wouldn’t!”

 

“You served the Lady...”

 

“I never _served_ Talia,” he went out on a limb. “I don’t serve. I worked for her. Then I didn’t. If you think that means I sucked her off then you’re as messed up as you look.” He tried to glare up at him with the same bleak black stare Jason wielded like a weapon. Knew he failed. “Do you suck her off? Is that why you think that? Is that what this new Leviathan thing does? A beta who likes alphas is a ‘sexual deviant’ but you alphas are getting it on with each other and in your tiny brained world that’s somehow okay?”

 

Ubu tilted his head to the side. “You alphas?”

 

Dick’s stomach twisted as he realised his mistake. “I mean, us alphas. You ‘Assassin League’ alphas.”

 

Ubu turned his back and stalked away from him. Instantly Dick had his lock pick in his hand and was working on the metal looped around his wrists. The lock was large and simply put together but with his hand contorted the way it was and the weight of the tumblers he struggled. Ubu left the room as Dick fumbled, almost dropped his pick, and finally burst free just as he started to think it might be easier to break his thumb. He sat up and started trying to free his legs. The chains appeared to have no obvious beginning or end and in the fifteen seconds the assassin was gone he couldn’t find any way to loosen the constricting grip.

 

The man returned with the head of a small firehose. He didn’t seem surprised to see Dick’s hands free.

 

Dick abandoned the chains and pulled two baterangs from his belt. “Wait. You don’t have to do this.”

 

“No,” Ubu agreed. “I don’t.”

 

The water hit him like a bullet train. Hard enough to knock the baterangs from his fingers and throw him against the cement wall. Within seconds the icy stream had all but immobilised him. All reasoning fell away as he fought for air and tried to bring his limbs up to shield his body and face. The brutal washing could have lasted seconds or hours, he had no way to know. It felt like years. And once it was over the bite of the air was almost as bad as the water had been.

 

Something rough and smelling of soap strong enough to burn his nose rubbed against his exposed neck; first one side then the other.

 

Clearly not finding what he was looking for Ubu kicked him over onto his chest and with what felt like a blade cut open the back of his uniform. Dick didn’t know of any knives that could slice through what his suit was made of and the shock of the naked air against his flesh jerked his limbs back into action even as a bucket of the burning soap was tipped over his head.

 

It was too late. He could smell himself.

 

Panicked. Sick. Low level beta.

 

He yanked the first thing he could from his belt – the grappling line – and fired it blindly up at the hulking assassin. Ubu staggered back and Dick twisted onto his back and scrambled for a weapon. Any weapon. His hands found the guns still hanging from the back of his belt. He wrenched them out, knocked off the safety, and aimed.

 

And just like that he was pointing a gun at someone for the first time in his life.

 

“Y-you don’t like Talia,” he stuttered, all pretences at alphahood gone. “You d-don’t have to do this.”

 

Ubu had a bloody mouth where the grapple had hit him. Otherwise he looked barely undone. Cold. In control. “You are the beta Robin.”

 

“Y-yeah. Yeah I’m the f-fucking beta Robin.”

 

“You are a bond breaker,” the man said.

 

“S-so the f-fuck what?”

 

“Why?”

 

He stared. “W-why do you think?!”

 

“You are a low level,” the man muttered. There was no accusation in the man’s tone. Just a touch of morbid curiosity. “You are a beta. Yet you act as an omega would.”

 

“I-I’m not an o-omega.”

 

“Is it to feed the needs of the unmated pack alphas?”

 

“No.”

 

“Is it to raise your status?”

 

“No!”

 

“Is it…?”

 

“It’s b-because I like alphas! I know y-you wouldn’t understand that with the sick f-fucked up way your League of A-Assassins thinks, but I do. I like them. I _seduce_ them. Y-you think that m-makes me wrong? You t-think that makes me less? F-fuck you!”

 

Ubu was looking at him. Looking right at him. Looking at where his torn uniform left his shoulder exposed.

 

“What is your name?”

 

“What d-does that matter?”

 

Ubu slowly drew his sword.

 

“Richard John Grayson,” he admitted. Anything to keep the man at bay longer. Anything that might give him time to talk to him. To warm up. To figure out some way to not have to pull the twin triggers heavy against his forefingers. “I came to avenge a m-member of my pack. An al Ghul who died at t-the hands of the monster you serve.”

 

The man studied him. “You speak of Damian al Ghul. Son of the bat.”

 

He nodded. “I do. He w-was my Robin.”

 

“He died at the hands of his brother, not his mother.”

 

Dick stared. “His brother…?”

 

“Is dead.” Ubu told him. “My Lady killed him shortly thereafter for disrespecting the house.”

 

He was shaking. “You mean his twin.”

 

“Yes.”

 

It didn’t change anything. Not really. It just added to the sick wretched mess he was wading through. Another link in the chain that was choking him. But it still hurt. Talia had used one son to kill the other, and then had ended the life of the victor. All of it no doubt part of her sick master plan. All of them puppets on her strings. “I will avenge b-both their deaths then.”

 

The man stared at him. “Perhaps you will.” He advanced a step.

 

“No! S-stop!” Dick wriggled back, still holding the guns. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

 

“My orders are to kill you.”

 

“And you haven’t yet. Y-you don’t need to obey. You can help me kill her then you can go back to your master. Ra’s al Ghul. That’s who you want to serve. You can serve him again.”

 

Ubu stepped forward again. “I was ordered to obey the Lady.”

 

“But you don’t have to! You don’t!”

 

Another step. “I do.”

 

Dick was squeezing the triggers. One notch. Two. Anymore and they would fire. “Please…”

 

“You’re begging me.”

 

“I am.” He stared up at him. “I d-don’t want to kill you. I don’t want to do this. I-I can’t cripple people with guns like Jason. I don’t know where to shoot. I d-don’t know how. I’ll hit something. I’ll kill you.”

 

Ubu brought the sword down to touch the tip very lightly against Dick’s jugular. “I expected you to beg… differently.”

 

There was a knife on Ubu’s belt. Far too short to be any use as a weapon but the blade glittered strangely as if sucking in all the light around it. Magical. Dick remembered how easily the man had cut open the back of his suit. A suit harder than Kevlar.

 

“How should I beg?”

 

Ubu. “Perhaps you shouldn’t beg.”

 

“How did you expect me to beg?”

 

“Like a bond breaker.”

 

Dick let those words settle around him for a moment. Let their meaning leach sick and fucked up into him. “Okay…” he let defeat creep into his voice as he lowered his guns and dropped them on the floor. “You want me to give you head? I can do that. I’m good at oral. Real good. I just…” he moved. The second – the microsecond – he saw the assassin’s guard lower he ducked around the sword, grabbed the knife, and dove away.

 

Ubu yelled as Dick brought the knife to the chains around his legs. _Please work please work please work please work please…_ To his shock it cut through the iron like warm butter and – carried on by the momentum of his push – slipped through his armour and bit into his calf. The wound was minor but still burned with a froth of new blood as he flipped onto his feet and retrieved his escrima sticks.

 

Ubu’s stare was as dark and unreadable as it had been since Dick opened his eyes.

 

“Get the fuck out of my way you sick sexually repressed fuck.”

 

To his shock the man obeyed. He stepped to the side, leaving Dick a clear path to the door, and waited. Eyes locked onto Dick.

 

A beat. Then two. Then five.

 

Dick ran. He shot through the door, raced down a windowless corridor in a messy limping lope, and served around the first corner he came to. He couldn’t hear, smell, or see Ubu coming up behind him but he was sure he was. The man was an assassin. He struck from behind. From the shadows. When his target was running the other way…

 

He threw himself to the side just as a scattering of throwing knives whistled passed to chick against the cement wall ahead of him. _Fuck fuck fuck!_

 

Dick blindly threw a couple of baterangs back and pushed through the first door he came across. Bolted it behind him.

 

He needed to breathe. Needed to think. Needed to plan. There was a way out of this. There always was. That’s what Bruce had taught him. That’s what he needed to believe right now.

 

Something thudded against the locked door. Hard.

 

He cursed himself for ever taking his eyes off Ubu and scanned the room looking for something – anything – he could use. A weapon. A way out. Anything.

 

It was a narrow windowless office walled with the same grey cement that he’d seen since waking up at Ubu’s feet. Files were in paper. Of course they were in paper. Leviathan knew Batman had some of the best hackers in the world on his side. Everything worth keeping secret was in paper. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a computer. There was. One hulking ugly thing sitting within a nest of cords and monitors.

 

A poor imitation of the batcomputer.

 

He ran towards it as something thudded into the door a second time. There was a USB stick in his glove compartment installed with a virus that would take apart most known security systems in seconds. If it needed help he had a cryptographic sequencer and a decent if not overwhelming knowledge of how systems like this usually functioned. As it turned out it didn’t need the help.

 

Another thud at the door.

 

By the time the fourth one came he’d broken into the landline and was calling the batcave. The batcave calls never rung on the callers end. A silent scream.

 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

 

Ten seconds. No answer. No one was in the batcave. But that was okay. If no one answered a call to the batcomputer it would reroute to the manor security system.

 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five…

 

_Thump!_

 

…six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

 

Dick stared. No one was at the manor? Why would no one be at the manor? Why would they all leave?

 

What’d happened?

 

_Thump!_

 

He hacked into the phone network and tried Bruce’s mobile number. It was off.

 

Jason’s was too.

 

He didn’t know any of the others by memory.

_Thump!_

 

Dick grabbed his USB and limped back towards the door. Before he made it he saw one of the files open across a militaristic desk. There were photos in it. Photos of the manor. Photos of Bruce. Photos of Gotham General Hospital.

 

_Thump!_

 

“Ubu!” He yelled. “What has she done to my pack?!”

 

“She hunts them.”

 

“What does that mean?!”

 

Again. “She hunts them.”

 

Rage and bile bubbled up his throat. “When I was a boy the League of Assassins at least pretended they were about making a better world! You at least pretended there was some deeper purpose to your messed up little cult! What are you doing now? You’re following some dog pining over an omega! We don’t have to do this!”

 

Through the door. “What would you have me do, Richard John Grayson?”

 

“Help me kill her!”

 

Silence. No answer. No ram against the door.

 

“Once she’s dead you get to go back to Ra’s al Ghul.” He pushed. “That’s what you want isn’t it? That’s what Ra’s would tell you to do if he were here. You know it is. You know that messed up family doesn’t care about killing each other as long as it gives them more power.”

 

Still nothing.

 

“Talk to me!”

 

A thump and a rattle. Ubu was locking the door… from the outside.

 

“W-what are you doing?”

 

“The Lady ordered me to keep you contained. She wishes to talk to you once all this is over… Jason Todd.”

 

It took a moment for him to process what was being said, and even longer for him to really understand it.

 

He heard Ubu’s clothing rustle through the door followed by a few dull mechanical chimes as buttons were pressed. “My Lady.”

 

 _“Yes, Ubu.”_ Talia’s voice flowed out into the air once again filtered through the tinny speaker. _“Do you have something to tell me?”_

 

“I have washed it. It is the alpha Robin. It is eager to see you.”

 

A crackling laugh. _“And I him. Keep him contained but don’t worry. I shall be there to see him soon enough.”_

 

“Yes my Lady.”

 

Dick held his breath. Ubu was giving him a chance. A chance to kill Talia. A chance to avenge Damian. A chance to…

 

The power cut off, killing the computer and plunging the room into darkness. Dick’s mask activated immediately lending him enough night vision to make out the confines of his boxlike prison.

 

Through the door. “Know, bond breaker, that I do this for the glory of al Ghul. Should you fail both our lives are forfeit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter is rough as guts. It was quite a strain to figure out and write, went through several incarnations, and I just needed to get it finished and out here. I hope you like it regardless.


	24. Chapter 24

When Clark was ten he used to wake up early to watch the cartoons on TV. It was hard for him getting up before the sun, especially back then, but the shows were worth it. Apart from being an exciting escape from rural Kansas they’d taught him a lot. The values of being a hero, of being a true friend, and – in a simplistic way – of being an alpha.

 

Betas were clever creative thinkers, the pack providers, and drivers at the helm of society. Omegas were rare and special beings, the bearers of the next generation, and were worth fighting and dying for. Alphas, he remembered learning, were strong. They were the protectors, the leaders, and the decision makers. They kept the pack safe and guarded their family with even more ferocity. When he presented as an alpha – otherwise known as the most awkward and embarrassing day of his life – his Pa had built on that knowledge and taught him alphas should love, respect, and never _ever_ hurt any omega that chose him as a mate.

 

It was a belief system he’d held onto to even when the law told him it was okay for an alpha to strike their omega mate in private as a form of punishment, even when in high school and neck deep in a homosexual love affair with Lana Lang, and even when Bruce and he fought until all he could do was fly into space and sit on an asteroid until he’d calmed down. He would never harm, he would never betray, and he would never do anything without his omega’s consent.

 

He watched the anaesthetist slip a needle into Bruce’s arm and drop the plunger. A minute bruise welled under his mate’s skin as the chemicals snaked into his already toxic bloodstream.

 

Clark had never felt more like a failure in his entire life.

 

“This should only take between ten to fifteen minutes,” Dr Leslie Thompkins was saying at his shoulder. “Then you’ll be able to see your baby.”

 

He could already see her. Safe and sleeping in his mate’s swollen womb. Her thumb was in her mouth, her fist loosely around the cord connected to her stomach, and feet tucked close to her chest. A single premature black lock of hair flared out from the crown of her head into the bed of water around her.

 

“It’ll take another forty minutes or so to remove the placenta and close him back up,” Leslie continued with a reassuring touch on his arm. “I’ll be here the entire time, watching, as will those two.”

 

Alfred and Ma looked down at them from observation. The two betas like two pillars of support standing behind a simple glass screen.

 

He couldn’t bring himself to look at them. He couldn’t bring himself to take his eyes away from his family lying unconscious on the surgical table before him. Shirt cut off and gown rolled respectfully down over the swell of new breast tissue, blanket pulled low to expose the expanse of his belly, and skin smeared with bright yellow antiseptic in preparation for the cut.

 

“Dr Thompkins.”

 

“Here.” The woman moved away from him to help the nurse.

 

Clark took the opportunity to lean in closer and gently run his fingers through Bruce’s hair; peeling sweaty strands away from the man’s brow and smoothing them back against his skull. The omega’s skin was an ugly icy white, the flesh under his eyes an odd reddish purple, and cheeks and chin hazed with black grey stubble. Stubble thick enough it could almost be christened a beard. If Bruce was awake Clark would’ve teased him for that. Since vacating the cowl Bruce had become a spotty shaver; some weeks doing it every day and some weeks not at all. This week had obviously been in the latter category.

 

 _I’m a forty eight year old alpha and my younger omega grows full facial hair faster than me,_ he thought with a strange touch of black mirth as he tenderly brushed another strand off Bruce’s face. _Of course you do you stubborn beautiful man. Of course you do. You’ve never played by the rules. Never._

 

He reached down and rested a hand on the man’s protruding belly. It would be a betrayal. He knew it would. Bruce would be hurt. He, an alpha, would be going against every rule laid into him since he was a boy in regard to protecting, respecting, and honouring his omega. But he couldn’t sit by and let his mate die. He couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. Even if something deep inside him violently rebelled against the idea of cutting Bruce open against his wishes.

 

_Respect. Love. Cherish._

 

“I told you,” Clark whispered, eyes looked onto the sleeping man. “I told you this is what I would do. I told you why I was doing it. I’m not going to let you kill yourself. I love you. I love you so much.”

 

The silence that followed was painful.

 

Clark caught himself wondering if Bruce was in the same black place Clark had been after Talia’s attack. _Blackness, death, nothingness._ The thought sent a shock of terror and revulsion through him violent enough to shake his physical body. _Emptiness, loneliness, fear…_

 

Never in his life had he wanted Bruce to open his eyes – ice blue and shining with his typical scolding regard – to scowl at him like he did when Clark opened the curtains before midday. To tell him he was being a bloody fool and come up with some impossible but genius plan to get them out of this without any betrayal, guilt, or hurt. To be _there_.

 

To be _there_ during the opening of his body, the birth of their child… to be a willing able minded witness to Clark’s intervention. To have signed the form so Clark wouldn’t have to intervene at all.

 

_God, Bruce, why couldn’t you have signed the form?_

_No matter what Talia’s plan is surely dying isn’t the best way to defeat her._

_Surly being there to protect and care for your family is better._

 

And the pack did need taking care of.

 

Half an hour ago he’d been standing in council with Alfred and Jason as Dr Thompkins lay down not just Bruce’s caesarean form but scans of Damian’s chest and Tim’s charts. Alfred was the first pack beta, Jason the first pack alpha, and Clark the mate of the leader. Without Bruce they formed an impromptu jury to make choices Bruce would normally preside over.

 

He didn’t know how the man did it. Giving commands in the Justice League was hard enough. To sift through information and quickly make the choices for his family was a thousand times worse.

 

“I need to talk to you about three things,” Leslie had begun solemnly. “Firstly, will we be giving Bruce a C-section?” Her gaze rested on each of them in turn. “You know the risks. You know the reasons. You also know his wishes. Now I need to know if we’re doing this.”

 

“He doesn’t want it,” Jason said stiffly.

 

“No,” Leslie didn’t try to deny it. “He doesn’t.”

 

“He’ll die without it,” Clark had rasped.

 

Jason. “You don’t know that.”

 

“I do.”

 

Jason had shook his head. “I don’t like it. He’s always right. Always.” His eyes rose to lock onto Clark’s. Gaze black. “It’s like when a fox hunter covers up all the foxholes but one. And that one is the big obvious one. You know it’s a trap. You know if you go that way she’ll get you.”

 

“But, Master Jason,” Alfred said softly, “if memory serves me best the hunter smokes out the foxes.” A long look. “We might know it’s a trap but if we don’t leave we’ll suffocate. If we don’t give Bruce the surgery he may die.”

 

The alpha’s jaw had shifted. “You’re gonna sign it aren’t you?”

 

“It’s not my decision to make.”

 

“Yeah it is.” Through gritted teeth. “Legally it is.”

 

“Master Clark is his mate.” Alfred turned to look at Clark. “It should be your choice. If he and you were anyone else it would be.”

 

Clark wished Alfred hadn’t given him the reigns. He wished the butler had signed, or not signed, without putting the decision onto him. But he had. “I need them both to be okay,” he croaked. “I need them both.”

 

“I need a yes or a no,” Leslie said. “Or a signature.”

 

“You protect them,” Jason rumbled. “You keep them safe.”

 

“Yes,” Clark answered them both at once. “Yes. Do the surgery. Take her out. I’ll keep them safe.”

 

Now in the surgery room he watched Bruce through the foggy edges of his glasses, face hot and stuffy behind a paper medical mask, and tried to find the resolve he’d had then to say those words.

 

He needed to do this. He knew he needed to do this. But that didn’t stop a storm of guilt, of pain, and fear stirring to true and terrible life inside him.

 

What if Bruce was right? What if this was a trap? What if it was safer to leave the girl inside him for a moment longer? What if the poison wasn’t fatal? What if he would regret this day for the rest of his life? What if Bruce would wake up and never let him near him again?

 

He knew the answer to all those questions. No matter what it wasn’t worth the risk. No matter what he wasn’t going to let Bruce gamble with his life. No matter what…

 

_Protect. Honour. Care for._

 

Jason hadn’t looked happy as Alfred signed the consent form but he hadn’t fought it. The young alpha was as uncertain as Clark; as out of his depth. Just like him he didn’t really know the right answer. Just like him he was only trying to make everything right. Like him he was praying the moves they were making were the right ones.

 

“You said there were three things, didn’t you?” Jason growled at the doctor. “What’s the next thing?”

 

Leslie didn’t waste time. “Damian may need a partial lung transplant.”

 

The silence that followed that statement had been deafening. The meaning behind her words horrifying.

 

“No,” Jason was the one to break it. “No! He’s getting better.”

 

“He is,” the doctor agreed, tapping the scans with the tip of her finger. “His infection is almost gone, his wounds are healing, and he is giving my nurses hell. But, inside, the damage has already been done. See this shadow?” Another tap. “Unless his recovery skyrockets that’s not going to get any brighter. He will not be able to breathe properly until we replace the destroyed tissue.”

 

Clark had felt oddly small shoulder to shoulder with Jason and Alfred as he heard the news and tried to make sense of the scan. He was meant to save Damian. He’d thought he’d had. Instead he’d left him vulnerable alone, and now the boy was paying the price. He was, because of Clark, going to be undergoing some of the most intrusive surgery imaginable. Just like Bruce…

 

_Aid. Love. Hold._

 

“I have taken the liberty of putting him on the transplant list,” Leslie went on. “Considering his age, general wellbeing, and common blood type I think it very likely we’ll be able to find a donor soon.”

 

“How soon?” Jason asked at the same time as Alfred who rephrased the question into an eloquent “What sort of timeframe can we expect?”

 

“I wish I could give you a definitive answer,” Leslie told them. “It could be hours or it could be weeks. But, whatever the case, he’s going to need to stay here with enriched oxygen and _no physical activity_ until the transplant is complete.” Her gaze softened as it moved to him, seeing something in his gaze. “There will be scarring but we can – in time – expect a full recovery.”

 

A nurse jostled him to the side as she stepped forward to briskly check Bruce’s breathing and airways before giving the thumbs up to the surgeon already wheeling a cart over to stand at Bruce’s bedside.

 

“Never thought I would be delivering the next Wayne,” the man remarked, eyes squinting into a smile over the shape of his medical mask. “I feel like I’m taking care of the royal family. Do we know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

 

“Girl,” Leslie answered before Clark could.

 

“Darn. I was hoping Brucie here would name it after me.”

 

A muted chuckle from the gathered nurses.

 

It seemed strange hearing laughter here on the eve of his betrayal after learning about the damage he’d done to Bruce’s son.

 

But that wasn’t all the news the doctor had delivered to them in that devastating meeting.

 

“I also would like to talk to you three about Tim,” Leslie had gone on, her tone changing drastically as she changed topic. Once firm but sympathetic. Now resolute and unreadable. “Has he been okay lately?”

 

“Yeah,” Clark glanced at the others for confirmation. “Apart from the poisoning he’s fine. I mean, he’s got a couple of bruises but…”

 

“I’m not talking physically,” Leslie interrupted. “Has he been okay? Emotionally?”

 

“No,” Alfred answered immediately.

 

Clark stared at the butler in shock.

 

“None of us have,” Jason added with a growl.

 

“Yes. I understand that.” The woman picked up Tim’s chart. “But I’m a little concerned about Tim. If his charts are correct his heat is a little under two weeks away. He’s at the tail end of the low point in his cycle. We’d expect a male omega of his age, height, and muscle mass to be heavier at this time.”

 

Jason. “You’re saying…”

 

“I’m saying he’s underweight,” Leslie cut in. “He should be finished gaining weight for his heat. Instead he looks like he’s been losing it.” A hard look at each of them. “You’re his pack and I know this is a stressful time but who among you has been making sure he’s okay? Really okay? An omega overriding their low point eating instincts is either in serious distress or is working through some serious issues.”

 

“How the fuck would you know?” Jason snarled.

 

“Have you seen any signs of anxiety?” Leslie pushed. “Depression? Body image issues?”

 

“He’s been stress nesting,” Alfred said softly. Guiltily. “That’s it.”

 

“I see. Does he stress nest often?”

 

“No. This is the first time.”

 

Clark stood shocked into silence. He hadn’t even known Tim was stress nesting. He didn’t even really know what stress nesting was outside of the rare occasion Bruce exhibited signs of it.

 

“We’ve been under attack by a terrorist organisation,” Jason hissed. “There would be something wrong with him if he wasn’t feeling a little fucking scared.”

 

“I agree,” she said, throwing the alpha off his line of attack. “And I hope this is a onetime thing. He’s not dangerously thin and in all other respects he looks like a very healthy young omega. But,” a firm look around the circle. “I need you to take better care of him. If he’s been stress nesting he needs much closer monitoring from his pack and if that behaviour continues I want you to get him some professional help. It may be nothing serious but sometimes having someone to talk to – having a mental health check-up – is a good idea.”

 

“Are you ready?” Leslie reached out and touched his arm, shocking him back into real time.

 

The nurses and midwifes were standing back, the surgeon ready beside Bruce’s distended body, and his mate unconscious and white before him.

 

“No,” he answered honestly.

 

“Will you ever be ready?” The woman prompted gently.

 

“No.”

 

“You’re doing the right thing,” she promised. “Bruce needs this and don’t you think it’s time you took a turn carrying that kid of yours?”

 

“I… I…”

 

_Cherish. Love._

 

“She’ll be fine,” Leslie assured him.

 

_Honour. Respect._

 

“And so will he.”

 

_Care for. Hold._

 

The surgeon lowered his scalpel to Bruce’s skin.

 

_OBEY._

The surge of instinct that shot through him was stronger than any he’d ever felt. A violent jolt of visceral primal need that uncoiled inside him with the ferocity of a cut snake. It wasn’t a learned reaction. It flowed deeper than that. From a place far beneath the teachings of his Pa or the early morning cartoons.

 

_OBEY._

 

He shook with it. Prickled with it. Surged with it.

 

“Mr Kent!”

 

 _“Do not touch him,”_ he was saying before he realised what he was doing. Before he realised he was somehow between Bruce and the terrified surgeon and speaking in Kryptonian. _“He has not given you leave to touch him.”_

 

“Clark,” Leslie was at his side. “What are you doing?”

 

“Bruce told me to stop the surgery,” he snapped. “He told me.”

 

_“If I fall unconscious I need you to make sure they don’t do the surgery.”_

 

“He ordered me. His order...” he trailed off as he realised what he was saying.

 

_Obey…_

 

He was obeying his omega. Mindlessly. Totally. _Instinctually._

 

It was against everything he’d been taught in regard to alphas and omegas. It was a reversal of everything sane safe and familiar. But he knew where it came from. He and Bruce had, in the first few weeks of the man’s pregnancy, already discovered the different social structure of Kryptonian society.

 

Kryptonians didn’t function in packs. They functioned in hives or ‘houses’ full of alphas and ruled over by a single dominant omega or ‘lord’. It was why he, as a Kryptonian, couldn’t form a human pack bond. It wasn’t in his genetic code.

 

But obedience was.

 

 _“One day,”_ Jor-El had told him once; the hologram floating and glaring at him with his own ugly alien eyes, _“he will ask something of you that you know is wrong. You may be trying to save people, maybe a whole planet of people, and he’ll tell you to stay and you won’t have the willpower to disobey.”_ A sickening prophesy. _“If he’s not your possession, Kal-El, he is your lord. We are none of us above our instincts. Not even the children of Krypton.”_

 

“I-I’m sorry I… I can’t… he told me to stop the surgery. He _ordered_ me.”

 

“You know why we’re going against him here,” Leslie practically pleaded. “You know the risks. He’s still getting sicker. He needs the medication. We can’t put him on the medication until we take out the baby. You could lose him.”

 

“I know but I… I can’t…” He couldn’t move his legs. God. He physically couldn’t bring himself to step away from the position he’d taken defending his mate’s unconscious body. Trapped like a man on a chain. “I’m sorry I…”

 

He hated himself in that moment. Hated Jor-El. Hated his biology. _This is wrong. You know this is wrong. Bruce’s given you orders before. Orders you’ve disobeyed. Why the hell can’t you disobey now? Why…?_

 

“Clark,” Leslie stepped in front of him. “Bruce. Could. Die. Without. This. Surgery.”

 

“I know. I’m sorry. I…”

 

“We’re here. We’re watching. We can stop Leviathan if they attack.”

 

“I know!” He looked at Leslie and then up at Ma and Alfred where they watched on in horror. “But I can’t let you do it.”

 

He didn’t realise he was crying until the tears caught on the rim of his glasses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh! Sorry this took so long! Things have been pretty crazy on my end and I fear they'll remain that way for a couple more weeks yet. Things may be a bit slower but I will try to get the next chapter out ASAP to make up for the longer than usual wait.
> 
> Oh, and (because I know I have a few Americans in my audience) MAJOR Kudos goes to you guys on the marriage equality thing. I must say I am jealous. My country is decidedly and depressingly less colourful. <3
> 
> Thanks as always for your overwhelming support! I am bowled over time and time again by your love, help, and awesomeness.


	25. Chapter 25

Tim’s nose was itchy.

 

He was also a little bit wet and a little bit hard but that was usual after a nap. That could wait until he had some time alone with Kon. The persistent itch tormenting that spot between his eyes could not.

 

With an annoyed groan he clumsily hoisted the impossible weight of his hand despite the confusing webbing of lines tugging and knocking at his skin and brought it towards his face.

 

“Tim!” Something large and warm wrapped around his fingers, trapping him before he could relieve the niggling spot on the bridge of his nose.

 

He frowned, made an annoyed noise, and cracked open an eye.

 

A face swam into his line of sight. Bottom lip held between teeth, hair messier than he’d ever seen it, and alien blue eyes blazing with anxiety. Kon. What was Kon doing here? Had he spent the night with him? Slept in his bed? Why would he do that? He knew it was against the rules. What if Bruce found out? Or Alfred? Or…

 

A second face jostled in beside the first. Thick half curls brutally hacked short, blue eyes dark enough to look black, and cheek festooned with piebald bruises.

 

Jason

 

Tim was awake in an instant. “No!” he choked out the cry. “Jason! Don’t! It’s not what it looks like. I can explain…” his voice was oddly muffled. His own breath rebounding hot and unpleasant against his face. “W-we were just, um, watching a movie. Watching a movie and we fell asleep. It’s no big…”

 

He pulled his hand free of Kon’s to reach up and urgently wrestle something stiff and plastic off his face; the thing that had been chaffing at his nose as he slept and was muffling his speech now. Once it was in the palm of his hand he stared at it.

 

A breathing mask? Why was he wearing a breathing mask?

 

He looked around and saw clear fluid bags suspended above his head, the bounce of his heartrate across a monitor screen, and a cobweb of tubing connected him to a small army of machines. All of it outside the frame of a clean white hospital bed.

 

Hospital. He was in hospital. Why was he in hospital?

 

The memories of the last week came crashing back with the force of a wrecking ball. Leviathan. Talia. Clark. Damian. Dick…

 

“The rings,” he rasped, gaze snapping back to Jason. “I-I told Dick. I’m sorry I…”

 

“Fuck, kid,” the alpha said softly. “I really don’t care about rings right now.”

 

“But…”

 

Jason. “Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“Really okay?” The alpha leant forward. “Cause the doctor reckons your, you know, freaked out or upset. Like, in a bad way.”

 

He blinked. “I, um, I’m fine.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“Yeah…” he glanced uncertainly between the two alphas. With a strange pang he realised this was the closest he’d ever seen them stand together. They were practically rubbing shoulders and for once didn’t look like they noticed let alone minded each other’s presence within ten feet of him. “But, actually, on the other hand I may still be dreaming…”

 

“Drake!”

 

He glanced to the side. The hospital curtains were clipped back and lights on leaving the room beyond the wall of the alphas’ bodies large and open. The bed beside his – the bed Bruce had been in – was gone but on the far side of the room was a new bed sitting within what looked like a large square bubble. A gaunt looking boy sat on the mattress and scowled at him.

 

“Damian,” Tim rasped as his brain caught up with what he was seeing. “Oh my God.” He was unable to keep the smile from his face. “You’re back.”

 

Damian’s glare didn’t relent. “Good of you to…” a ragged wheeze “…finally notice, low level.”

 

He rasped out a painful laugh. “You haven’t changed, demon spawn.”

 

“You on the other hand…” another strangled breath “…are even more useless than usual.” Damian didn’t say those words the way he used to. Didn’t say them with a hint of the ugliness or intent to hurt he had when Bruce had first brought him back to the manor. If anything, what had once been a vindictive and bitter exchange of insults had evolved into a dry kind of game. Not affectionate. Never that. But perhaps… brotherly.

 

“You’re such a brat,” he said as Kon regathered his hand into his.

 

“Well,” Damian attempted to retaliate, “you’re just… just…” he struggled to catch his breath, heaved as if he were about to cough, and winced.

 

Tim’s smile slipped. “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you breathe right?”

 

“I’m not the one…” gasp “…waking up from a coma.”

 

“I just went to sleep for a bit.”

 

“No.” Kon shook his head venomously, pulling Tim’s attention back to his bedside. “You weren’t just asleep.”

 

“Yeah I was,” he dismissed him.

 

“No you weren’t.”

 

Kon’s flat assurance beside Jason’s unflinching black gaze sent a shot of uncertainty through him.

 

“I wasn’t?”

 

“The doctors couldn’t wake you,” his boyfriend pushed on. “It wasn’t a coma, not a proper one, because you still flinched when they poked you in the finger.”

 

Tim stared at him and then down at his finger. “W-what?”

 

“You weren’t just asleep.”

 

Tim stared at him. “But…”

 

Jason. “You’ve been out for a while, kid.”

 

A prickle of fear. “A w-while? How long’s a while?”

 

“A day.”

 

He tried to process what he was hearing. Found he couldn’t. He didn’t feel like someone waking up from a coma. There was none of the stiffness, weariness, or weakness he’d expect from that situation. Instead he felt… not fine. No. Not yet. But he felt better than he’d been when Alfred had driven Bruce and him to hospital and he was practically puking up blood.

 

“So… you fixed it,” he muttered, trying to make sense of the situation. “You cured me. You cured Bruce.”

 

Kon looked at Jason. Jason looked at him. They didn’t say anything.

 

Across the room, inside his perplexing fishbowl, Damian settled back on the bed, equally as unresponsive.

 

The boy looked thinner than before; his cheekbones jutting at a very Bruce-like angle from a previously round face and arms narrow around the contours of muscle. He was covered in nicks, scrapes, and bruises and had – in turn – covered his surroundings in drawings ripped from his sketch book of bats, swords, and what looked like sketches of children too individual to come from his imagination.

 

If Bruce was here he would question him on that. No. Not question. Interrogate. Bruce had no subtly when it came to that kind of thing. If he saw an anomaly he would sit down the offender be they friend, family, or foe and bombard them with questions and steel eyed looks until he’d uncovered the truth.

 

But Bruce wasn’t here.

 

Neither was Clark, Alfred, or Ma Kent.

 

Tim felt the fear bloom and shoot through him as he processed the silence around him and the gap where his leader’s bed should sit. “Oh God, where’s Bruce?” He squeaked. “What’s happened? What’s going on? Was the poison…? Y-you got to tell me. You got to. He’s got to be… he’s okay right? Please tell me he’s okay. Christ, he’s got to be o—”

 

Jason made a low noise, reached out, and pushed his palm in the middle of Tim’s chest as he tried to sit up. The alpha’s hand was hot, heavy, and grounding. An intrinsically dominant and immediately stilling touch that made Tim suddenly aware of the beating of his own heart.

 

“Breathe, kid.” Voice a rumble without being a growl. “Slowly.”

 

Tim found himself obeying without a second thought. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. When that didn’t seem to satisfy the alpha he repeated the process.

 

Kon looked between Tim and Jason, confused and obviously unhappy but allowing whatever was happening to happen. A liberty he wouldn’t have afford Tim and Jason a few weeks prior.

 

“Bruce ain’t dead,” Jason told him when Tim was breathing normally again. “We’re looking after him.”

 

“We are?”

 

“Yes.” He didn’t go into any further detail.

 

Tim found he didn’t need to. He trusted him. If Jason assured him it was okay he would believe him. He was, at the end of the day, the unquestioned first pack alpha and without the first pack beta or a leader present authority fell without demur onto his shoulders.

 

It was comforting trusting in the pack, even if it was in such a strange extensional way.

 

“What happened?” He asked again. Calmer this time.

 

Kon glanced at Jason’s hand, then the man, before answering. “The bleeding was due to poisoning. We don’t know by what but once we figured out what contraceptive medication you were on…”

 

Tim’s eyes flicked to Jason. The older alpha’s jaw was stiff but apart from that there was very little Tim could infer from the man’s black stare or the persistent heavy weight of his hand resting against his chest. If he was surprised to learn Tim was on birth control he didn’t show it.

 

“…the doctors put you on that,” Kon finished and pointed at the bag over Tim’s head. “Now you’re getting better.”

 

Tim squinted up at the bag. Read the label and the line of chemicals listed along the bottom. “It’s a broad spectrum?” He realised with disbelief. “They don’t know what it is yet broad spectrum is working?”

                                                      

“Yeah.”

 

Tim shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. The League of Assassins has to have better viral weapons and poisons than that. Damian, if you had to poison someone what would you use?”

 

“Cobra Venom,” the boy answered hoarsely. “That one’s my favourite.” He sucked in a pained breath of air. “But viral is more dramatic than poison now days.”

 

“Creepy,” Tim commented with a shaky smile. “B-but on point. They have a ton of poisons, bacteria, and viruses. Stuff that can knock out broad spectrum in, like, a second. This doesn’t make sense.”

 

Kon looked unconvinced, Jason’s gaze was black enough to be unreadable, and across the room Damian looked annoyed that his preference in poisons had been insulted.

 

“Where’s Bruce?” Tim asked. “What does he think?”

 

This time Jason spoke. “They took Bruce twenty minutes ago. For surgery.”

 

“Surgery?”

 

“Caesarean,” Kon specified.

 

Confused. “He’s not due.”

 

“He can’t take the drugs you’re on,” Kon said. “They would be bad for the baby. He’s still getting sicker. They need to take her out.”

 

“Oh…” Tim looked up at the bag over his head. At the list of chemicals. They were all pretty standard. Simple anti-venoms, coagulants, and the standard treatment for dehydration. He didn’t like it. It didn’t make sense. Why would the League of Assassin’s use a weapon – be it toxin, bacterial, or viral – that was so easy to cure? Surely they had something better. Something deadlier. Unless there was a reason Talia wanted them to find the cure so easily. Unless she planned this. Unless… “Talia wants the baby out of him.”

 

A pause.

 

“That’s the only reason why she would poison us with something that responds to broad spectrum. You can’t give half these drugs to a pregnant person. But you need to give it to Bruce to stop the poison. Therefore the baby is coming out of Bruce by her design. It’s what she wants.”

 

Jason’s face seemed to draw in tighter around his skull. “That’s what Bruce said.”

 

“Clark will take care of them,” Kon said with conviction. “Talia won’t get to either of them.”

 

“But that’s what Talia wants,” Tim restated.

 

Kon looked tortured as he answered. “But if they don’t do what Talia wants Bruce dies.”

 

Jason glanced at the other alpha, eyes dark, but didn’t argue.

 

Something had changed, Tim realised. Something in the way Jason and Kon reacted to and looked at each other. It still wasn’t friendly but there was an understanding between them that hadn’t been there before. A tolerance, perhaps even an acceptance.

 

“She’s holding a gun to Bruce’s head,” Jason finally spoke up. “It might be a bluff. Might not. Bruce wanted to call it. Clark didn’t.”

 

“She’ll do it,” Damian said across the room, face down. “If she doesn’t get…” breath “…what she wants she’ll kill him.” Breath. “She’s vindictive like that.”

 

“What kind of ten year old uses the word vindictive?” Tim tried to joke around the pit of fear opening in his gut.

 

“One with a decent education,” Damian jabbed back, tone equally as stiff.

 

“Clark’ll look after Bruce and the girl,” Kon tried to assure everyone. “Then Bruce’ll go on the meds and get better like Tim so he can lead everyone again.” His smile bloomed to hazy uncertain life. “And we’ll all be okay this time around. All together.”

 

Jason’s eyes flashed like black fire. “Except Dick’s still missing, freak.”

 

Kon’s brows sunk but for once he looked guilty instead of angry. “Right... Dick. We’ll find Di—”

 

The door burst open and the two alphas tore themselves from Tim’s bedside. One abandoning his hand, the other his chest, as they rounded together to face a new enemy with twin growls.

 

Ma Kent walked in, her hair flying in a loose silvery white cloud around her round red face. Behind her came Alfred looking drawn and composed.

 

“What happened?” Jason asked first.

 

“Where’s my father?” Damian demanded on a single breath of air.

 

“Where’s Clark?” Kon said at the same time.

 

“Where’s the girl?” Tim added his own voice.

 

Alfred stopped when he saw Tim and then veered off course to join the alphas at his bedside. The butler’s hands were unusually cold but gentle as they ghosted over his face, checking to see if he was really there.

 

“It is good to see you awake, Master Timothy.” Earnest and pained. “So very good.”

 

“I didn’t realise I was asleep,” Tim muttered.

 

The beta laughed softly. “One rarely does.”

 

“Clark stopped the surgery,” Ma Kent said as she sat down on an armchair that would have been by Bruce’s bedside had Bruce’s bed been in position. “Why would he do that?” A question pitched to no one in particular. “Oh Lord, why would he?”

 

“Wait,” Kon looked around. “The surgery stopped?”

 

“Master Clark, it would seem, has changed his mind,” the butler said. Voice strained. “He’s not letting anyone with a knife or a needle near Master Bruce.”

 

Without a word Jason moved through the room and vanished out the door.

 

“Wait,” Tim croaked. “Y-you’re not meant to go alone…”

 

Kon looked at Tim, after Jason, and finally bent over the bed to push a caste kiss onto his cheek. “I’ll go with him.”

 

“But…”

 

Tim watched in confused horror as Kon jogged out of the room after the other alpha.

 

“…where are you going?”

 

“They’ll be fine, Master Timothy,” Alfred assured him. “I’m sure they’re just going to try and talk to Master Clark.”

 

Martha. “Why would he stop the surgery? Why?”

 

Tim gaze flicked from her to Alfred. “What happened?” He’d been asking that question a lot lately.”

 

“I’m not sure, Master Timothy.” The butler’s eyes were tortured. “I’m really not sure.”

 

Damian. “That’s not…” gasp “…good enough!”

 

Tim reached up to touch the spot Jason had held him with the hand Kon had seized. He felt suddenly adrift without the anchoring presence of the two men. Bruce would have called it weak unsubstantiated instinct and insisted on some exposure training if he saw Tim behaving so dependently but Tim really did feel safer with the alphas in the room. Especially now, no doubt thanks to some rip in the space time continuum, they had figured out how to be in the same room together. Something he’d all but given up on ever being able to witness.

 

Martha began to pray softly to herself and Alfred left Tim’s beside to comfort the pale faced boy on the other end of the room trying to will his wretched lungs to work out an angry tirade.

 

He listened to the praying rather than the boy.

 

Both his mother and father had been liberally yet wholeheartedly religious throughout his youth and the sound of prayer was comforting in a way he hadn’t expected it to be. He’d never really made up his mind as to whether or not he believed in God but organised religion was something he left behind when he moved to Wayne Manor. Bruce was a firm atheist, a man of evidence and tangible conclusions, and Clark seemed to have slowly and comfortably worked his way around to a similar conclusion. Alfred on the other hand appeared to know the bible from end to end but the same could be said for the Quran, the Torah, and the Tripitaka. Jason never had any interaction with belief – organised or otherwise – Tim wouldn’t be surprised if Damian prayed to his sword, and Dick believed in friendly ghosts, touching wood for luck, and thought _Fiddler on a Roof_ , _Jesus Christ Superstar_ , and _Kismet_ were all the education on the different faiths he ever needed.

 

“Jews hands down have the best singing voices," Dick had told him once when sorting through the movies. "Christians have a rockin vibe going on, but I think I have to become Muslim because – _damn_ – Howard Keel with a beard is _hot_. If I wasn’t with Jay I would be getting myself a time machine and tapping that.”

 

“Wasn’t Howard Keel a beta?”

 

“Don’t say that Timmy! You’ll ruin it for me.”

 

“And doesn’t Islam condemn alpha beta relationships?”

 

Dick had poked his tongue out at him and settled on _Chicago_ as the movie they were watching, evidently deciding the religious theme wasn’t as important as the musical one.

 

That was the closest he’d come to talking about God with a member of the pack. Not that he minded. It was the kind of subject he was happy to think on in private. A topic of reflection and personal contemplation rather than academics.

 

But, it was comforting in a way he hadn’t expected it to be to hear Ma Kent pray. It reminded him of his mother and father cheering him on in fifth grade high jump, the lollies he got after church on Sunday, and the first wedding he’d seen between an alpha and an omega.

 

The omega groom had worn a collar so frilly it needed a bowtie to hold it against his neck, had a suit that ballooned around his hips, and longer coat tails than anything that should exist in the twenty first century. He’d also been the most beautiful thing a five year old Tim had ever seen.

 

 _Wow._ He remembered thinking. _Wow…_

 

He’d never dreamed he’d one day be an omega. It was a surreal juxtaposition.

 

Jason burst in the door flanked by Kon and jolting Tim back to the stark white hospital room.

 

“Where are they?”

 

Alfred straightened. “The operating theatre. You know where that is.”

 

“I know where that is,” Jason echoed through gritted teeth, “but they’re not there.”

 

Martha stopped. “Where are they?”

 

“That’s what I asked!”

 

Alfred. “They’re likely just…”

 

Kon was looking through the walls above, below, and either side of them. Clearly hunting for the missing pair through concrete and steel. “I… don’t’ think they’re here…”

 

Tim felt panic began to seize him again. “Not here? How could they not be here? Where would they have gone?”

 

“Did mother…?” Damian looked a little green.

 

“Oh Lord,” Martha said again.

 

Jason. “How the fuck did this happen?! Why the hell did you leave them?!”

 

Kon was starting to look worried now as his gaze flicked from room to room.

 

“Please calm down Master Jason…”

 

“Calm down? Our leader and our big gun just fucking up and vanished!”

 

Kon. “They got to be here. They were here a minute ago. They got to be here…”

 

Damian’s glare was growing resolute. “It is mother, isn’t it?”

 

“We don’t know that, Master Damian.”

 

Tim pushed himself into a sitting positon, cords and tubes tugging painfully on his limbs, as the room rapidly went to hell around him. He felt a little dizzy sitting up so fast but he was still a lot more able than he had been under the thrall of whatever toxin or virus Talia had flooded his system with.

 

Jason was yelling at Alfred, Alfred trying to calm Jason, and everyone else looked lost and confused in the thick of it all. Tim just felt scared. It had become a familiar feeling this last week but without even Bruce’s presence to fall back on it built with startling speed to the teetering edge of crescendo.

 

He sucked in a deep breath, just like Jason had told him. One. Two. One. Two. In. Out. In. Out.

 

He needed to think. No one else was thinking so he needed to do it. It was what he was good at it. It was how he could help.

 

“We have to check the operating theatre,” Tim began.

 

They looked at him.

 

“If that’s the last place they were seen that’s where the evidence will be.”

 

Jason. “I ain’t playing the evidence game today, kid. They were here two stinking minutes ago. Where the hell are they?”

 

Frustrated. “How are we supposed to know if you don’t gather evidence?”

 

“I’m not wasting time dusting nurse robes! They’re here! Just…”

 

“There may be a way,” Alfred interrupted. “To find Master Bruce without evidence.”

 

Every eye in the room turned to the butler. Tim all but held his breath.

 

“Master Bruce has a GCPD tracking anklet on.”

 

Tim stared. “Huh?”

 

Damian. “Why?”

 

Kon. “But…”

 

Jason was the first one to process the information with a bleak thin lipped determination. He bypassed any surprise he felt over the news, bypassed the enviable thoughts of deceit and betrayal, and pulled his phone from his pocket. Finding it dead he dropped it carelessly on the floor and stole Alfred’s.

 

Within a minute they had their answer.

 

“Bruce’s tracking anklet has not triggered,” Jason rasped.

 

“But he’s not here,” Kon protested. “I checked. I’m still checking.”

 

Alfred. “There are two locations programed into that device. This hospital is one of them. If he’s not here then he has to be at or on route to the other.”

 

“What’s the other?” Tim squeaked though he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

 

Alfred’s response confirmed it. “Wayne Manor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really hoping all this is exciting/interesting and not melodramtic. :)


	26. Chapter 26

It was a dream.

 

No. Not a dream. A nightmare.

 

A violent, vivid, wretched nightmare.

 

It had to be.

 

How else could he explain waking up in his bed, separated from any medical equipment, with the familiar sound of Clark’s breathing beside him? How else could he explain his apparent health, the explicit normality of the sun peeking through his bedroom curtain, or and the baby still kicking with her normal morning irritability inside him? How else could he explain being in his bed, beside his mate, healthy and pregnant?

 

He couldn’t.

 

It had to have been a dream…

 

…but if it was, why couldn’t he hear Tim and Damian arguing as they got ready for school? Why wasn’t his glass of pills and vitamins on his bedside table? And why wasn’t Clark hugging him, pressing a wet kiss onto his cheek, and telling him ‘good morning’ in the voice that really meant ‘the sun is up and so am I’.

 

Clark – as long as there wasn’t cloud cover – was the undisputed king of morning wood. Sometimes it aroused Bruce. Usually it annoyed him. He wasn’t exactly his best at the crack of dawn and wasn’t as indestructible nor as easily recharged as his mate. Often he was still spent from the night before or just after a few extra hours sleep. Just then, however, he wouldn’t have minded. In fact he would have greedily welcomed it. Clark attempting to instigate ‘sunny morning sex’ would have been the final piece of evidence he needed to accept that the last two weeks were just an ugly dream. The final shred of normality that would have set right everything – the inconsistences and the conflicting evidence – still spinning uncertainly through his brain.

 

Sex would also have eased the dry painful throb of his bond just starting to starve from lack of hormone sharing. A dull pain his mate, as an alpha, was surely feeling worse than him.

 

But despite it Clark wasn’t trying to instigate. He wasn’t even touching him. When they slept together Clark usually reached out and rested a hand on him if not pull him into a full embrace. Now it felt like there was a yawning chasm between them.

 

“It really happened, didn’t it? These last weeks.” He gazed ahead, out the window. Didn’t roll over to face the man all his senses told him was there. “The hospital. The poison. Talia. You. It all really happened.”

 

Clark didn’t answer for a long time. Then… “Yes.”

 

He swallowed. “How am I here?”

 

“I took you here.”

 

“Why?” Bruce asked, already dreading the answer.

 

“You told me the nurses were dangerous.”

 

“You told me you would give me a caesarean.”

 

“I did.” Beat. “But you told me not to so I guess that’s that.”

 

He listened to the way Clark said those words. Listened to the lilt and inflection of his voice. “You hate me,” he concluded softly.

 

Clark. “You think so?”

 

“I know it,” Bruce said. “I don’t know why but I know you hate me right now.”

 

A hollow pained laugh. “He doesn’t know why. Of course he doesn’t know why.”

 

Bruce rolled over at that and studied the other man. He was fully decked out as Clark Kent with bulky medical scrubs over his usual plaid shirt and green bags around his shoes. His glasses were on the pillow beside him and hair twisting involuntarily and undisturbed towards Superman’s windswept spit curl. A tell-tale sign that he’d been flying in these clothes.

 

“No,” Bruce said softly. “I don’t know why.”

 

“You’re the world’s greatest detective,” Clark told him stiffly. “I’m your mate. Figure it out.”

 

“You want me to figure out why you hate me?”

 

“Damn it, Bruce. I don’t hate you!”

 

Bruce stared at him for a long time. At his surgical attire, the pleat in his brow, and the hurt angry look in his eye. A cold suspicion mixed in with guilty relief began to creep into the back of his mind.

 

“Talk to me, Clark.”

 

“Is that an order?”

 

“Would it matter if it was?”

 

Clark didn’t say anything. His silence more telling than any words could have been.

 

“You couldn’t do the surgery,” Bruce concluded slowly. “You tried. But you couldn’t. Because I’d asked you not to.”

 

“You told me.”

 

“I asked you.”

 

Silence.

 

“And I’ve asked you things before,” he went on slowly. “I’ve told you things before. You’ve disobeyed direct orders from me before both in the suit and out. But somehow this time was different. Somehow all Jor-El’s talk of instinct finally kicked in. Really kicked in. Why? What’s the variable?”

 

“Don’t,” Clark hissed. “Don’t talk about me like I’m some kind of science project.”

 

Bruce stared at him. Dead straight. Penetrating. “Don’t talk about me like I’m somehow the bad guy here. I’m not to blame for your DNA.”

 

Clark twitched and rolled away from him. “I need you to tell me to take you back.”

 

“No.”

 

“You need the surgery.”

 

“I don’t.”

 

“You do.”

 

“I’m awake, Clark.” He let those words settle in. “I’m awake without any of the hospitals medication. I feel fine.”

 

Angry. “You’re not fine. You were in a coma. You wouldn’t stop bleeding. Things like that don’t just go away. You’ll lapse. You’ll…” Clark raked his fingers through his hair, “…I don’t know! I need to take you back. I need to get you onto the medication that’ll save you. I need to do the surgery.” His gaze flicked back to pin onto him. “I need you to tell me to do the surgery.”

 

“I’m not going to do that. Talia could be—”

 

“Talia would let you die if it proved her point! I’m not! Tell me to do the surgery.”

 

“No.”

 

“Tell me!”

 

His voice was harsh, deep, and savage. The closest thing Bruce had ever heard Clark come to growling. So close in fact it sounded like a deliberate reach.

 

A pang of bitter betrayal shot through him. “You bastard.”

 

Another mock growl. “Bruce…”

 

“You’re trying to trigger me,” he snarled back, finding a small sick sense of satisfaction in the fact that he could hit the low gravelly notes Clark missed. “You know I used to have submissive reactions to the sound of an alpha growling. You know as my mate those might resurface with you. You’re trying to give me an order.”

 

Clark didn’t say anything.

 

“You’re trying to take away m—”

 

“I’m trying to even the playing field,” Clark confessed.

 

Bruce stared. “Fuck you,” he croaked. Without looking at his mate he sat up, swung his legs off the side of the bed, and stood. The carpet was frigid under his bare feet, air chilled beyond the embrace of the blanket, and his breath threatened to fog. The freezing presence of a house abandoned midwinter.

 

“No, Bruce!” Clark was instantly in front of him, holding him and taking his own weight off his feet. His arms, as always, radiated warmth. “You shouldn’t stand.”

 

He forced himself not to lean into the familiar temperate touch. “Get off me.”

 

“You…”

 

“Get the fuck off me!”

 

Clark’s jaw was stiff as he spoke. “You’re sick Bruce.”

 

“And you’re disobeying a direct order,” he snapped back. “Without so much as a twitch. I didn’t order you to do anything, Clark. Clearly it wouldn’t have mattered even if I did. Whatever triggered your instincts wasn’t me. Not deliberately. Not consciously.”

 

“But you’re happy it happened.”

 

“Do I sound happy?”

 

“You left me powerless Bruce! Powerless to save you! Can’t you understand that?”

 

Through stiff lips. “What the hell would you know about being powerless, Clark? I’ve had my back broken. I’ve had my sperm stolen. I’ve had to choose between overdosing myself on suppressants and overdosing on my own hormones in an untended heat. You? You’re an alien that can fly.”

 

Clark glared at him. He hated being reminded he was an alien. He hated people telling him he was better than everyone else. He hated being judged by the sum of his powers. “And you’re an extreme high level omega.” The man retaliated. "What you are is stronger too."

 

Bruce barked out a single horse bray of laughter. “You think being an extreme high level omega is powerful? Which porno taught you that?”

 

“You’re going to pretend there—”

 

“Being a high level omega is not hot, fun, or even healthy let alone powerful! I’m a fucking fetish! I know you like it. I know it makes you feel good. I know you think it’s hot. But that doesn’t make me powerful. You think just because I’m sometimes sexually dominant that means—”

 

“Stop telling me what I think!”

 

“Fine,” Bruce snapped. “I’ll ask. Do you really think being a high level omega is comparable to being Superman? Do you really think being compelled to obey is unique to you? Do you really think you’re the one that that’s powerless here? That’s been powerless?”

 

The alpha glared at him. Eyes shining a bright angry blue. Despite it the man’s arms were still oddly gentle as they held him up. Irrespirable bands of muscle and heat. “What does that mean?”

 

Bruce’s hand clenched into a fist and pushed against the man’s embrace. “ _You_ left, Clark! _You_ disappeared! I couldn’t leave my bed but I still had to run a pack.” He finally managed to shrug Clark’s arms off him and stood defiantly under his own power. Glared at the other man. “And here you are saying _you_ were powerless because of _me_? Because I _asked_ you to respect my choice? _Powerless_? You?!”

 

Low. “You paint a convenient picture don’t you?”

 

There. _There_. Clark’s voice finally reached the octave and the timbre of a human alpha’s growl. He did it without meaning to. He didn’t project his voice, flash his teeth, or square his shoulders. He just spoke. Low. Soft. Deadly.

 

It was the first time he’d ever heard that sound from his mate.

 

“Convenient?” Bruce forced himself to respond feeling suddenly dangerously off balance. “I’m sorry if my life is conven—”

 

“I know your life has been hard, Bruce. I know that. I’m not asking you to pretend it hasn’t been. But don’t try and use your history to justify this. Fine, you’re right. I shouldn’t have implied being a high level omega made your life easier. But your hardships don’t erase mine.”

 

“What the hell have you—?!”

 

“I died, Bruce.”

 

He stopped and stared at him. “No…”

 

“Do you know what that is like?” Clark asked. Deadly serious. “Being dead?”

 

“You didn’t die…”

 

“Nothingness. Emptiness. Forever.” He spoke the words with a tortured kind of familiarity. “That’s all it is. Just… nothing. I use my x-ray vision every time I blink so I never have to see nothing. I’m afraid to go to sleep in case I don’t dream. I’m afraid that’s where you’re going to go if you die. I’m afraid, Bruce. More afraid than I’ve ever _ever_ been.”

 

“I didn’t…”

 

“Perhaps that’s your ‘variable’. Perhaps that’s what set off my instincts. But I can’t trust myself around you right now. I can’t trust my own will to control my body.” A long look. “I need to keep you and our daughter safe. I need that more than I need sunlight. I’m scared that I’ve lost that power.”

 

Bruce stood before him feeling pathetic, petty, and small. Humiliated by the earnestness in his mate’s voice and the cheapness of his own argument juxtaposed with Clark’s confession. In lieu of their fight he wrestled those feelings off his features and bottled them deep in his chest. A mass of uncertainty and doubt that he wasn’t strong enough to show his mate just then. Not when it threatened to undermine his point still burning fresh and bitter on his tongue. Not when it would injure the mass of anger and pride bubbling red and white behind his eyes.

 

Childish. The whole thing was childish. Beneath them. But he couldn’t just banish his emotions, nor confront what Clark had just told him. Not then.

 

“Is the pack okay?” He asked, changing the subject.

 

A pause. “Yes.”

 

“Do they know where we are?”

 

“No.”

 

Bruce shifted, just enough to feel the GCPD tracker still around his ankle. Clark hadn’t stripped him of the hospital pyjamas or – now that he looked – a lot of the hospital bedding and likely hadn’t discovered the tiny GPS’s presence yet. He wouldn’t be surprised if his pack already knew his location. He was lucky Clark didn’t decide to take him somewhere else or the thing would be audibly signalling he’d broken the bounds of his confinement. He wasn’t ready to tell Clark about his arrest. Not right then.

 

“Why?”

 

“I can phone them,” Clark told him; voice still stiff. “Just tell me to do it and I’ll do it. I don’t imagine I’ll have much choice.”

 

Bitterly. “Don’t start.”

 

“I think we’ve already started.”

 

“I didn’t give you an order,” Bruce told him sharply. “I didn’t. And yes, I’m happy you never signed the form. I’m sorry if being forced to respect my wishes offends you.”

 

“We signed the form.”

 

“You…” Bruce digested this. “You took me straight afterwards?”

 

“No. You were already in the surgery. The surgeon was about to cut. He nicked you.”

 

Bruce reached around the lumpy shape of his pregnancy and below the elastic waist of his pyjamas. Sure enough, below the cradle of his hips above his pubic line, a small cut stung at his touch. It was new. Very new. “How long ago?”

 

“Not twenty minutes.”

 

Bruce shook his head. “If I was under atheistic I would feel it.”

 

“You are,” Clark told him. “They injected you.”

 

“I don’t know what they injected me with but I’m not numb,” Bruce told him bluntly. Something occurred to him. “And I’m not bleeding anymore.”

 

Clark was frowning and scanning him the way that meant he was using his x-ray vision. “You’re… not,” he concluded in a croak. “Oh God.”

 

“The anaesthetist injected me with a cure instead of a painkiller,” Bruce spelled out their discovery. A solution and a torture… and reeking of Talia. So at least one person in the room was Leviathan. There was a petty sense of victory proving himself right over Clark after their fight and a weary sense of relief that he’d managed to foresee and dodge at least one of Talia’s attacks.

 

“Jesus,” Clark swore. “Jesus I…”

 

“Clark.”

 

“No,” he held up a hand. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

 

“I…”

 

“I don’t want to fight anymore.”

 

Bruce hadn’t intended to fight and the implication prickled the frayed edges of his nerves. _Self-righteous bastard._ He swallowed it down. He and Clark fought from time to time. Normally Clark had the luxury of flying into space for a few hours so they could both calm down before sharing small simple apologies and perhaps – if the mood was right – make up sex. Right now they didn’t have that. Clark wouldn’t leave him like this and he needed Clark to help him sort out the next step to their plan now that they’d finally outstepped Talia.

 

“You’re still on bedrest,” Clark said stiffly.

 

Bruce looked at the bed and back to the alpha. Slowly, he sat but did not lie on the mattress.

 

“I want my pack out of that hospital,” he began. “All of them. Bring them home.”

 

“I can’t,” Clark told him.

 

He worked harder than he ever had before at keeping his face unreadable. “Why?”

 

“Tim’s not better. Leslie says he’s underweight.” A deep breath. “And Damian needs a partial lung transplant.”

 

Bruce stared. “A transplant?”

 

“I… I didn’t seal the wound in his back.” Clark said. His gaze dropped to the ground. Guilty for the first time since Bruce woke. “I didn’t think. I just wanted him to run. I thought he’d get home. The infection… Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

Bruce stared at him and felt his anger begin to melt away. “Why are you apologising?”

 

“I tried to save him. I failed.”

 

“To me?”

 

“I…”

 

“I don’t have any more claim over him than you anymore, Clark. He’s your son too.”

 

Clark’s eyes snapped back to him. Shocked. “W-what?”

 

“In my mind you’re his alpha parent. Not Talia.” He sucked in a deep shuddering breath of air. “But we can’t leave him in that hospital. I trust Leslie but I don’t trust any of her staff. She has no real way to screen them and it’s obvious Leviathan has already infested the building.”

 

“But where…?”

 

“Wayne Enterprises Medical Research,” he named it quickly. “Fox is able to screen our employees much more effectively, we’ve not had any new recruits since August, and I’ll ask Leslie to take the week off and join them. They’ll be able to do everything the hospital could do.”

 

“Except have access to the donor register,” Clark protested.

 

“We have a donor.”

 

“What?”

 

“His brother,” he reminded Clark. “They’re twins. Perfect matches.”

 

Clark looked noticeably whiter than before. “But… he’s been genetically modified.”

 

“Having a piece of super powered lung won’t hurt Damian.”

 

“Heretic’s been dead for a week,” the alpha protested. “You can’t put a dead lung in a person.”

 

“It’s standard practise at Wayne Chem to keep bodies ‘alive’ as long as possible to better mimic living people for experimentation. And if he only needs a piece the organ doesn’t need to be actively working for the tissue to be alive.”

 

“Then what?”

 

“Then Damian lives.”

 

“No. Then what happens to your other son? Your other son that would be my son if he’d been given to us instead of Damian. Is he just going to be a lab experiment?”

 

There was a very real pain in the man’s voice. A humbling pain. A pain he should be feeling but wasn’t. He’d never known Damian’s twin. Never held him, hugged him, or bonded with him the way he bonded with Damian the other day. The way he’d loved Damian over the last year. His death was a tragedy but it wasn’t his tragedy and if it saved the son he did know, did love, then he would accept it willingly. Clearly Clark wasn’t so cold in his assessment of the situation. Clearly he cared. Cared in a way Bruce should but didn’t. “We’ll donate his useable organs,” he said quickly, a mathematical answer to an emotional question. “And give what we can to medical research. The rest we’ll burn and bury outside… as one of us.”

 

The man still looked white. “Under a blank tombstone.”

 

“We’ll give him a name,” Bruce told him. “A real name. Not Heretic.”

 

The alpha visibly tried to force a laugh. “We can’t even name our daughter now we’re naming a dead son.” He shook his head. “It’ll be a name he never knew, never connected with, never answered to. It’ll just be for us. Not for him.”

 

“You want ‘Heretic al Ghul’ on the tombstone?”

 

“No. Jesus Bruce. That’s not what I said. You don’t have to be so cold.”

 

He felt that jab like a knife between his ribs. He bunched his hands in the bedding. “Go.”

 

“Bruce I…”

 

“Get my pack to Wayne Enterprises,” he told him. “But only if you want to of course. I wouldn’t think to _order_ you to do anything, _alpha_.” His smile was all teeth and he knew it. A taunt as much as anything else. “I’ll be here – you’re big powerful omega – unable to get out of bed.”

 

Clark sent him a dark look. “You know you’re a jerk sometimes.” Disappeared in a rush of air.

 

Bruce’s smile dropped away slowly. His cheeks hurt afterwards. So did a spot deep in his chest.

 

He kicked aside what little blankets were bundled against him and pushed himself back onto his feet. In the walk in closest he found clothes to weather the manor unheated and violently tore off the unhemmed cotton pyjamas the hospital had imposed on him. He replaced it with the most uncomfortable clothes he could find. Starched and stiff with seams that dug painfully into his bulbous belly.

 

 _Fucking bastard. Useless **pathetic** bastard. What the fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck was that?_ It took a moment for him to realise he was thinking about himself not his mate. _He told you he’d died. He told you he was afraid. He told you he was struggling with instinct. You mock him. You goad him. You cheapen him. Where the hell do you get off? What the fuck is wrong with you?_

 

Decked out in clothes so mismatched Alfred would have resigned if he saw him Bruce made his way from the room and started the long slow trek to the batcave. The baby inside him was getting heavier with every day and his joints too old to comfortably deal with the extra load. For once he was grateful for the pain. It was a reminder that despite everything – through some brutal happenstance – his daughter was still with him. Safe in spite of a world that seemed determined to steal her from him.

 

The hallways were as cold as his room, the air barren without the muddied smell of his pack, and the catch behind the grandfather clock stiff. When it finally swung back he picked his way slowly down the steps half expecting Clark to swoop in, tell him he was being an idiot, and drop him back in his bed. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, he was obviously having trouble moving his pack. He doubted any of them would go without at least an explanation.

 

He sighed as he emerged into the even cooler air of the cave and made his way over to the familiar nest of computer screens wrapped around his chair. The computer scanned him before it woke with a flare of batsignals. Once his fingers ghosted over the keys an alert popped up.

 

Someone had tried to contact the cave. Someone who knew the contact information that bypassed the filtering system.

 

Dick.

 

A pang of hope and dread shot through him as he quickly attempted to open communication with the line. Nothing. The signal cut out immediately. But that didn’t mean he was done. A quick hack and the batcomputer threw up the details of the contact… including a pinpointed location.

 

He frowned.

 

But that was…

 

Something moved in his peripheral vision. His head snapped around, eyes scanning the shadows. Nothing. There was nothing. But… the batmobile was in the wrong spot. His eyes locked on the machine sitting perfectly in the parking bay. The last person to drive it had been Dick. Dick never parked perfectly.

 

He slowly reached under the desk and detached a couple of baterangs. Slotted them at the ready between his fingers.

 

Too late. He already felt the icy cold tip of a sword press lightly – almost tenderly – against his jugular just as a scent dampened shape slipped into his line of sight. Her hair was pinned into a tight twist behind her skull, full lips pursed into a tight amused smile, and body arranged with elegant lethal grace. “There you are, Beloved.” He let the pressure of her blade bring his head around first to one side, then the other. She clucked her tongue in approval. “Still as beautiful as ever, even as your alien attempts to hide it behind the beard.” Her features were sharply undeniably beautiful, body lean and corded with unobstructive muscle, and eyes more alive than the eyes of a killer had any right to be.

 

Talia al Ghul. Leviathan. His enemy in his house.

 

He had three baterangs in his hand under the desk. But she was stronger than him right now, a skilled fighter at the worst of times, and had a sword – very possibly a magic sword – at his throat. He would rather bear the humiliation of letting Clark save him than risk hurting his daughter. He would do anything rather than risk hurting his daughter.

 

He needed to stall. Needed to give Clark time to return.

 

But he couldn’t think. Not when the woman’s eyes were raking down his body and taking in his pregnancy with a vague sigh of irritation before returning to his neck which she looked at for quite some time. Studied with an undeniable sexual fascination. As he was, sitting, with her standing over him and a sword at his throat his chin was being forced up. His neck shown.

 

A posture of submission casually enforced but obviously enjoyed.

 

“This game we’ve played," she began, "it’s been quite the foreplay no? Batman Inc. Leviathan. Masks, capes, and costumes. A war in the absurd. A war in your world.” She was smiling. A sharp, carnivorous smile. Gaze still on his neck. On one side of his neck. On his omega gland likely naked of Clark’s mark if the soft uncomfortable stretch of their mate bond was anything to go off. “But I weary of it. It was fun, Beloved. Truly. But I think…” a pause. “…I think we’ve both lost a little too much for this game to go on.”

 

He thought of Dick, Damian, Tim, and Clark. He thought about the deadening drain of missing family members, the feverish hope for his previously lost son, and the words Clark had shared with him in the bedroom upstairs. _I’m afraid, Bruce. More afraid than I’ve ever **ever** been._ He thought about missing lungs, dead twins, and his mate looking at him like he’d hurt him as he childishly and bitterly added to that pain. He thought about his dream, about a home porno he would never make, and the girl still kicking him obliviously in the back. He thought about blue dresses, wedding presents, and how much he hoped their daughter had Clark’s hands.

 

Clark had the most beautiful hands in the world. Like an artist, he remembered. Hands that hadn’t touched him – hadn’t _really_ touched him – even as the man held him as they fought mere moments before.

 

“Yes,” he heard himself agree. Voice soft. “I think we have.”

 

Talia smiled. “It is time for you to come back, Beloved.”

 

“It is time for us to finish this,” he corrected her. “So we don’t lose anything else to each other ever again.”

 

An amused crook of her brow. “You wish to fight me? Like this? Dear Bruce. You know you would lose.”

 

“I’m not fighting you,” he told her. “Not yet. But I’m not going to let you hurt me, my pack, or my family anymore.”

 

She studied him. Amused and sad all at once. “Perhaps you will, Beloved. Perhaps you will.”


	27. Chapter 27

Kon had always wanted a pack. When he was younger he imagined he’d found it in Young Justice. A pack and a family all bundled into one. He and Cassie Sandsmark were the alphas, the pillars of strength that protected and shielded the more important members of the team. Bart Allen was this strange funny little thing that had brought them all together, an unstoppable paragon of fun and freedom. Tim was the leader, both in battle and out.

 

No doubt they seemed strange to anyone on the outside looking in. A team of teenagers with their own stolen place in the world. To him it seemed like the most natural normal thing in the world. He loved them, would fight for them, and – eventually – he and Tim would be mates. That had been his whole world back then. The team, their place, and his future with Tim. A simple future where easy happy days never ended.

 

But he’d been wrong. They weren’t a pack, they weren’t a family, and the older they got the more evident that became. Friendships he thought were unstoppable and indestructible became looser and casual. Promises were broken as often as they were kept. And his relationship with Tim – once he finally won it – was complex, ever changing, and as painful as it was beautiful.

 

And that was what a pack was like. A real pack. It wasn’t friendship, happiness, and goodness. It was a thick and multifaceted web of want, need, and duty. A member’s want for respect and individuality, their need for understanding and place, and the duty to help others through the same struggles. It was as much about hierarchy and acceptance as it was teamwork and companionship. It was as much about desire and taking as it was about love and giving. It was… more than he ever thought anything could be.

 

And he knew he was only scratching the surface. He was an outsider looking in, barely seeing beyond the fog of the surface, and yet he was seeing more than he ever had before. This last couple of weeks with Tim’s pack had taught him more about what a pack was than the rest of his life put together. He saw people and their instincts sync together and break apart like cogs in a clock, saw the way the tiniest gestures translated effortlessly between them, and – when Clark woke – how apart from it he was.

 

Clark wasn’t only operating outside the pack he seemed completely unaware of it. He didn’t feel the tingle of togetherness when they gathered together, didn’t see the whole exchanges conveyed in looks, and despite being with them for years didn’t have a purpose or a duty the way the others did.

 

He was loved, respected, and accepted… but he was also apart.

 

Kon was apart too. But he didn’t hang over it all the way Clark did. He barged in, broke it. He damaged it. That’s what he did when he threatened to take Tim away to create a new pack, that’s what he did when he challenged Jason for no other reason than it fed the alpha inside him, that’s what he did when he demonised the true pack that stole away his false one.

 

He hadn’t seen it before but he could see it now.

 

He didn’t know what had given him this newfound clarity, didn’t know why Clark still clearly didn’t have it, but he handled it with care. He still wasn’t certain of the subtly of pack language – perhaps he never would be – and so he slotted himself around its function in a way he hoped didn’t pull any piece apart. He didn’t know the nuance of the roles or where pack ended and family began but he knew more now than he ever did before and he wouldn’t make the same mistakes.

 

Tim was still his. But he was the pack’s as well. Jason was still a dick. But Jason was also serving a purpose. If he needed to fight him again he would. But Jason was the first pack alpha and he was starting to understand that meant something… something important. Something he hadn’t known before and run up against. Now that he’d accepted it he found himself, without thinking, not submitting to the man but falling into formation behind him. Trusting him, following him… it was a place. A place like second pack alpha. Perhaps not in the pack but adjacent to it.

 

And despite everything… despite his lower position, despite his revelations about pack, despite the trauma that allowed him this close to a pack… he still wanted it.

 

More than anything.

 

So when Jason had poked him in the chest and given him the one worded order ‘protect’ he’d obeyed.

 

“W-where are we?”

 

He looked to the side at the boy blinking back into awareness beside him. Damian was whiter than his complexion should let him be, was wearing an oxygen mask connected with heavy duty tubing, and draped across the backseat of the car beside him. Leslie had protested them leaving the hospital and had been absolutely livid at the idea of going without ambulances… but at the alternative suggestion that Clark could fly them she had finally relented. The doctor was in the same car through a privacy screen in the passenger seat beside Alfred. Kon was in the back watching over his charge. The pack’s one child.

 

Jason still wasn’t leaving him alone with Tim.

 

“We’re going to Wayne Enterprises,” Kon told him. “Clark came and told us it was safer there. The nurses at the hospital aren’t safe.”

 

The boy looked around the crowded leather interior of the car. “Only us?”

 

“No,” Kon pointed out the window at a second car stamped with the Wayne crest. “Tim and Ma are in there.”

 

Damian arched to squint out the window. “Where’s…” a ragged breath. “…Todd?”

 

A roar of a motorbike engine as the man in question cut between the cars to almost drive someone off the road who’d threatened to separate the twin vehicles.

 

“There,” Kon answered.

 

Damian. “ _Tt_. I see.”

 

“He’s only staying with us until Wayne Enterprises,” Kon began to explain. “He’s…”

 

“I don’t need the details, Kent.”

 

“Oh…” he trailed off. “Sorry.”

 

Damian had just fallen asleep when Clark arrived at the hospital and gave them Bruce’s order to move. Jason had already been gearing up to leave and, upon his arrival, had dragged the alien into their private bathroom away from a sleeping Damian and frightened looking Tim.

 

The walls hadn’t been enough to block out their argument. Not to him.

 

“You think you can just fly off with our leader? We agreed! We agreed on the fucking surgery!”

 

Clark. “I know, damn it, I know.”

 

“Now we’re meant to take orders from y—”

 

“It’s Bruce’s order,” Clark had snapped back, angry. Angier than Kon had ever seen him outside of battle. “Not mine. I wanted to do the surgery. I wanted to stay here. Clearly, I was wrong. Clearly I’m the worst alpha for him because if I had my way my whole family could be dead.” A ragged strained breath of air. “He wants you all at the company. You’ll be safe there. You know he’s right. He’s always right.”

 

“ _We’ll_ be safe?” Jason didn’t relent. “What about _him_? What part about the ‘no one alone’ rule didn’t you understand?”

 

“You don’t want him left alone? You go. I can’t deal with him right now.”

 

Jason’s voice was the tone and timbre Kon was used to hearing directed towards him. “Some fucking mate you are.”

 

Clark hadn’t protested the label. Hadn’t said another word.

 

“Dick’s bikes are all really nice,” Kon tried to start up a conversation with the boy again as Jason swooped around the car with a roar of engines.

 

“They’re flamboyant and childish,” the ten year old corrected him. “Just like…” breath “… Grayson.”

 

“Flamboyant? But it’s bad arse.”

 

“’Bad arse?’” Damian echoed scathingly.

 

“Like…” he sat for a moment, stumped. “Um, nevermind.”

 

Jason booted the bike past them with a roar of engines. He was journeying with them to the doorstep of Wayne Enterprises then continuing on to Wayne Manor. Bruce may be recovering thanks to a needle the surgeons gave him but he, like all of them, shouldn’t be left alone. In that he agreed with Jason.

 

Clark was his dad. His cool, easy-going, fun dad. But, for the first time, Kon felt himself condemning the man. _You took him away… you left him alone… you changed the rules behind the pack’s back…_ And, as always, he wasn’t seeing the ripples that duplicity caused in the finer workings of the pack. He didn’t understand. Just like Kon hadn’t understood.

 

The drove for a time in silence through the tangle of Gotham traffic. The sky was a gritty grey beyond the glaze of the window, the buildings mirrors reflecting only each other in endless circles, and street sides barren and empty.

 

A few of Batman Incorporated robots flew over still on their quest to track down and return Batman to the cave. Damian shied away from them, sinking into the shadow of the backseat as they swooped low and continued scanning the area.

 

Awkwardly. “Are you all cool?”

 

Damian’s eyes snapped back to him. “’All cool?’”

 

“I mean ‘okay’.”

 

“Then say okay.”

 

“Okay?” Kon echoed dumbly. “Oh, um. Okay.”

 

Damian’s glare was unrelenting.

 

“Um, are you okay?” He asked again.

 

“My lung is rotting.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Then why do you…” a breath. “…feel the need to waste my time asking?”

 

“Sorry,” Kon said. “I…” he saw the boy flinch as another robot swooped over him. “…just want to make sure…”

 

“Why?” Damian snapped.

 

“I… I just…”

 

Damian swivelled onto his back and glared across the backseat at him. He had the most terrifying glare. A blue so pale it looked like ice, but colder. Bruce’s glare. “Is father at the company?”

 

“I… probably,” he guessed. “I guess if that’s the safest place that’s where he would go.”

 

“You guess?” The boy echoed.

 

“Well… yeah.” Kon forced a smile. “He’ll be there.”

 

“You have the foolish trusting optimism…” breath “…of a one year old. No wonder Drake likes you.”

 

Kon decided not to answer to that and instead looked back out the window scanning the traffic and Jason’s chosen path between it. He was sticking much closer to the other car, trusting Kon to take care of this one if things went badly.

 

“He does,” Damian said when he didn’t continue their conversation.

 

“Who does what?”

 

“Drake,” the boy articulated. “He likes you.”

 

Kon felt himself blush and smile but quickly rearranged his face into what he hoped looked dignified enough for the boy to bypass the usual mockery. “I guess… he is my boyfriend.”

 

The boy studied him, glanced at the other car, and then turned back to him. When he spoke his voice had changed. “Do you like him?”

 

“Yes,” Kon answered uneasily, uncertain where this was going.

 

“Even though he’s a low level omega?”

 

“Ah…” he shifted in his seat. “I-I don’t think that’s bad… is it?”

 

Damian opened his mouth.

 

“No,” Kon answered himself and interrupted the boy at the same time. “It’s not bad. I know it’s not bad. Why would it be bad? He’s… I like omegas and he’s the most, I mean, a really nice one. A really nice one.”

 

“You like low level omegas?”

 

He frowned. “I guess.” He’d never really thought about it like that. When he woke up from his pod the first thing he saw was Tim. And the first part of Tim he saw was his lips. The attraction had been there then. A spark that focused him on this beautiful masked boy that lead everyone with all the authority his small limber frame suggested he shouldn’t have. When he found out Tim – then Red Robin – was an omega he’d locked onto him with a kind of tunnel vision that he’d never really shed. He saw other omegas, he even admired a few… he’d caught himself looking at Bruce more than once when he first met the man… but Tim was always the focus of his attention. Tim was always _the_ omega for him. It wasn’t because he was or was not a certain level but because he was Tim…

 

Right?

 

Cassie had kissed him once. She was an alpha and the moment their lips came together he knew it didn’t work for him. If Tim had been something else – a girl, an alpha, or a beta – would he still want him? Or would he have moved on and perused Bart or another omega?

 

It was a surreal thought.

 

“You guess?” Damian echoed, unimpressed.

 

“Yes,” he corrected himself. “I do. I… I think I like omegas. The levels don’t bother me as much…” he thought about it. “Though I think I like boys better than girls.”

 

Damian crossed his arms. “Everyone in this pack likes boys better than girls.”

 

Kon shook his head. “I… I don’t know. I know Clark and I aren’t pack or anything but Clark told me he didn’t care. He was… anything goes. Girl, boy, alpha, beta, omega. He likes them all. And Dick just says he likes alphas, he never says he likes boys over girls. And your dad was with your mum…” he trailed off. Not sure if it was okay to talk about Bruce and Talia.

 

Damian didn’t flinch. In fact he seemed to consider this. “I don’t think my father’s…” rasp “…been with a boy apart from Kent.”

 

Kon blinked. “Really?”

 

“He said something once,” Damian muttered. “About Kent being…” breath “…the exception or… something. And my… mother. She used to talk about his… women. Never his men… She never talked about any men he was with.”

 

This was the first time he’d ever heard this and Tim was the biggest gossip from the pack not a beta. He was also uncannily good at reading people and generally picked up interesting observations. He’d never seen Bruce anything but with Clark and pregnant with their child. The idea of him with someone else was strange enough. The idea of him, as a general rule, preferring something else was unsettling.

 

Unless… maybe if Tim was an alpha he would still like him. Maybe Tim would be his exception. Maybe they would have ended up together no matter what.

 

It was a comforting thought.

 

He looked across the road and through the car body work to see the young omega. Tim was sitting in his seat nursing a traveling IV stand and picking at a massive burger meal Jason had landed on his lap before they set off. He looked healthier than he’d been at the hospital and two points of pink sat on the tips of his cheekbones. It was more colour than he’d seen Tim wear in weeks.

 

As Kon watched he picked thoughtlessly at his food, mind obviously elsewhere.

 

“You owe me a favour,” Damian said suddenly and all in one breath.

 

Kon looked at him. “Huh?”

 

“You do,” the boy declared. “You broke the TV…” he sucked in a horse hungry breath of air, “…and I lied for you to Jason.”

 

“But Jason caught me,” Kon protested, remembering the incident. It was less than a month ago but it felt like years. A time before… all this. A time when he was still as blind as Clark to what packs really were and the most important thing was getting inside Tim before flying back to Smallville.

 

“That isn’t my problem,” Damian snapped. “You owe me.”

 

He hesitated.

 

“I need you to do something.”

 

Uncertainly. “What?”

 

“I need you to promise… you’ll do it.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“Nothing illegal.”

 

“What is it?” Kon asked again, wishing he was safely in the other car guarding Tim not, for the first time, to be with the omega but to escape his boyfriend’s little brother. “I’m not using my TK power for you.”

 

“You don’t need to,” the boy informed him with a wheeze. “I just need to… test something.”

 

“Test something?”

 

“That’s what I said.” Damian hoisted himself into a sitting position and moved towards him.

 

“I don’t know…” Kon shied away from him. “What’s this about?”

 

“Are you a man of… your word or not?” Damian snapped, somewhat brokenly. “You gave me a favour and now I’m… calling it in.”

 

“But…”

 

“Kiss me.”

 

Kon stared at him. “W-what?” He couldn’t have heard that correctly. He must be having some kind of stroke or…

 

“Kiss me,” Damian repeated.

 

“W-why?”

 

“You like low levels.” He began. “I’m a low level. I think I like boys. Kiss me.”

 

He stared at the boy. The ten year old boy. “You said it wasn’t illegal.”

 

Angry. “It’s just a kiss, Kent.”

 

“You’re a kid,” he protested. “I’m not kissing a kid.”

 

“You…” Damian moved towards him and Kon pushed him back with an unwieldy extension of his TK. It was clumsy, broad, but not hard or fast enough to hurt him. Despite it Damian’s face twisted as it made contact with his chest. “Damn you!” The boy yelled when he realised he was back at the other end of the seat and held there with an invisible extension of Kon’s strength. “You promised! You owe me!”

 

“I can’t kiss you,” he begged the boy to understand. “It would be… weird and wrong and…”

 

“So I’m weird and wrong?”

 

“That’s not what I said.”

 

“Yes it is.”

 

“No it isn’t.” Kon gently eased down his wall of TK and tried to negotiate. “You’re ten. I’m seventeen.”

 

“You’re one,” Damian corrected him. “Not even. Just because you’ve adopted your boyfriend’s age,” a ragged breath, “doesn’t mean it’s yours. I’m closer to your age than Drake.”

 

“But I’m…” he waved his hand at himself. “Big.”

 

“So it’s my height,” his lungs rattled with lose air, “you object to?”

 

“No.” He fished for an answer the boy would accept. “I… I’m with Tim.”

 

“It’s just a kiss. It’s hardly cheating.”

 

“Y-you don’t really want this,” Kon tried.

 

“I do.” A long, almost tortured, look. “I want you to kiss me like you kiss Drake. I want to… be like Drake… not to care about a caste because…”

 

He studied him. “Because…?”

 

Damian jerked back as if he’d been stung and glared at him. “I should have known you wouldn’t be true to your word,” he spat. “I’m just a… low level bitch. Not even a smart one like… Drake. What’s the point of…” he trailed off, pinched the bridge of his nose in a gesture far beyond his years, and hissed through his teeth. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.”

 

Kon didn’t know why the boy thought he was a low level omega, why he wanted to kiss him, or what he should do in this situation. He just knew he was fucking it up.

 

“I um… I think… you see…” he struggled. “It’s… well…”

 

“Quiet.”

 

“I can do that,” he promised gratefully.

 

“Prove it.”

 

He opened his mouth to reply, stopped, and nodded as he watched Damian settle back into his seat looking small, angry, and humiliated. The boy was right. He was being a coward. But he didn’t know how to tackle turning down the boy’s request in a way that was courageous. He didn’t know how he could step out of this car without debasing himself or robbing the boy of his dignity. Just like he didn’t know how he could slot himself into the workings of the pack and maintain the level of self-importance that had fuelled his early fantasies of pack, added to his aggressive sexual pursuit of Tim, and driven him to push back against Jason.

 

Better. He had to be better. If that meant saying nothing and being a coward that was fine. He hadn’t fought to win Tim, and fighting to keep him was making him feel better in the moment but damaging their relationship. Tim’s _‘grow up, Kon’_ a couple of weeks ago was proof enough of that. He didn’t want to be that guy anymore. Not after being put on his knees by Bruce, not after working with Jason, and not after struggling through the last night fearing his boyfriend was going to die.

 

He was too tired for the ‘alpha pride’ he’d held onto before. The pride that had seemed so important not so long ago but was just excessive and exhausting now.

 

“Shit.”

 

Kon looked at Damian, stunned. “What did you say?”

 

“Shit,” the boy echoed.

 

“You’re ten. You shouldn’t know that…” he trailed off as he saw what the boy was looking at out the windows. The cars were just pulling up in the loading bay at the front of Wayne Enterprises. He’d never seen the building this close and his eyes raked over the modern gothic infusion rising up into the sky with the clean unstoppable abruptness of a blade. But it wasn’t the building Damian was talking about. It was what was in front of it. The pavement was overspilling with all the press, well-wishers, and interested observers they’d managed to avoid at the hospital. He saw Vicki Vale’s savage bright red hair, Summer Gleason practically hopping to see over the shoulders of people around her, and – to his shock – Lois looking cold and pissed off in the background.

 

“Cover your face,” Damian ordered.

 

“I… I don’t…”

 

The reporters were swarming towards them along with a senseless mess of different protesters. He saw a girl no older than five holding a ‘keep the bitch out of the business’ sign, a red faced woman yelling and pointing up at Bruce’s robots swooping behind the building, and a bearded man wearing a homemade t-shirt with the Batman Inc. logo crossed out in red. Beside him a woman in rainbow was leading a group of bony teens in applause, another woman wobbled under the weight of a board that read ‘to Leviathan – slay not the bearers’ signed with a bible reference tag, and massive alpha kept yelling ‘Gotham loves Bruce Wayne!’ through cupped hands.

 

“Shit…” His own voice this time.

 

“You’re probably going to have to carry me,” Damian said stiffly.

 

“Carry you?”

 

“I don’t know if I can walk through that.”

 

“Oh… rig—”

 

Kon didn’t know if Damian opened the door of if it was the mob but he heard the latch snap back and saw the door begin to fold outwards.

 

He frantically dragged his jacket up and around his head. He didn’t know what would happen if Superboy was spotted with the Wayne family in the middle of this crisis but he could guess it wouldn’t be good… for anyone.

 

Leslie and Alfred had already sprung from the car to meet Wayne Security sweeping towards them through the throng. Kon used his x-ray vision to peer through the leather of his jacket as he gathered up Damian and pushed towards them. Grandma appeared at his side, toying a startled Tim along behind her, and together they pushed towards the door.

 

It was overwhelming ever for someone with super hearing.

 

“Where’s Bruce Wayne?!”

 

“Batman Inc. is criminal militarism!”

 

“Who’s the alpha that’s been with him at hospital?!”

 

“I love you Timothy!”

 

“Are you a part of Batman Inc?!”

 

“We won’t let Leviathan get you! We’ll stay here all night!”

 

“Wayne brought this to Gotham! Wayne consorts with criminals!”

 

“Leviathan kills omegas and babies!”

 

“God protect Bruce Wayne!”

 

“Why does Batman Inc. survey and obstruct citizens?! Why are we policed by privately owned and operated robots?! Why do we live under a faceless dictator’s regime?!”

 

“Batman’s bitch! Batman’s bitch! The bitch breeds with Batman!”

 

“Drake! Tim Drake! Over here! You’re so beautiful!”

 

“Gotham is Batman!”

 

He pushed through it all, wildly grateful for his super strength, and finally carried the scowling Damian into the Spartan foyer. Jason had kept his promise and ridden on once he saw them to the door of the building but Tim, Grandma, and Dr Leslie were clustered tight around him. Alfred had handed over the keys before following but managed to slip unnoticed through the crowd before ducking in after them. He waited until they were in the safety of the private elevator before uttering a word.

 

“Well,” the beta stated coolly. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

 

“What are they protesting?” Kon heard himself ask as he wriggled his jacket back onto his shoulders.

 

“Everything,” Leslie answered. “And some of it I agree with too. But yelling at a sick family? I’m sorry but sometimes I hate the people of Gotham.”

 

Ma Kent made a low sound of agreement.

 

“That’s fine though,” Tim interjected softly. “If they stay to yell at us there it’ll be even harder for Leviathan to get into the building unseen… even the horrible ones hated Leviathan. Everyone hates Leviathan after the poisoning. They’ll report someone breaking in.”

 

Damian snorted within Kon’s loose hold but didn’t say a word.

 

They reached their destination and the elevator doors pinged open.

 

There were a line of people waiting for them, each either in crisp white lab coat or a stiff suit with two ridiculously high tech looking hospital beds at the ready. Clark was among them, simply disguised as a Wayne worker with an unusually high clearance badge. His lips were drawn, cheeks flat, and gaze sullen and strained.

 

“Are you alright with Damian?” The man addressed him.

 

“Is my father alright?” The boy snapped back.

 

“I got him,” Kon mumbled in answer as he hoisted Damian onto the nearest bed and glanced over to watch Tim reluctantly seat himself on the edge of the other.

 

Lucius Fox, the CEO of Wayne Industries, was already talking to the young omega and – in typical beta fashion – making sure he was alright.

 

Leslie didn’t say anything but she looked decidedly unhappy and misplaced as she stepped out of the lift and into Wayne Medical Research. Her simple clothes were out of date beside the sleek utilitarian design of the building, aging medical bag rustic and humble juxtaposed with the equipment already on display, and messy bun of hair almost comical beside the perfectly composed researchers. She’d protested this move – practically begged them to stay – and insisted on coming when they didn’t. He wondered now if she regretted that choice.

 

Ma Kent seemed to have been written off as another member of the Wayne caretakers and moved as invisibly as Alfred among them all.

 

Fox. “It’ll take another few hours to prep the donor for Damian’s surgery but we can optimize Timothy’s medication in the meantime.” An almost impish smile targeted towards the omega. “I have a few new formulas I would love to show you.”

 

Tim expression shifted to one of interest. “Formulas?”

 

Clark put a hand on his shoulder. “Can you keep an eye on Damian for a little longer?”

 

“Yeah…” Kon heard himself respond. If he’d been given that instruction a week earlier he would have been annoyed he wasn’t being assigned to look over and guard Tim. Now it seemed like a gift enough just to see Tim awake, eyes alight with his usual indestructible curiosity. “I can do that.”


	28. Chapter 28

There was no epic battle. No heroic speeches. No duel of the fates.

 

There was only a kiss.

 

A soft dangerous press of lip on lip that tasted of chemical dampener, fading sickness, and the explicitly feminine spice of Talia’s alpha hormones. High level. Far higher than he was used to. Not plain and peaceful like Clark’s. Not wholesome, safe, and warm but potent, multifarious, and strong enough to bombard the edge of his tongue. She was not, however, distasteful. In movies a bound omega kissing another alpha would typically recoil in revulsion from their taste. He wished that were the case. There was something intrinsically wrong about the potency and flavour of Talia’s hormone occupied saliva. Something jarring about kissing someone shorter than him again. Something off putting that throbbed deep into his core where his bond with Clark was tethered. But it did not nauseate and revolt him. It just… numbed him. An unfamiliar opposite to arousal.

 

Whatever objections he had, however, Talia clearly didn’t share. She moaned in delight, closed her eyes, and teased the side of his mouth with her tongue. He neither endeavoured to participate nor resist the kiss, aware all the while of the gentle pressure of the blade against his throat.

 

He still had three baterangs, now folded secretively into the cuff of his sleeve. But she was right. She was in her prime and he… wasn’t. If it came down to a fight he had no doubt, without backup, she would win. If it had just been his life at stake he would have fought. He would have died rather than compromise his dignity for the desire of an alpha. But now he had something more important than his dignity to defend. Something squirming innocent and irritable in the bowl of his hips.

 

_It’s okay, pup. It’s okay. I’m not going to let her hurt you._

 

So he let her kiss him.

 

No matter how deadening it was.

 

How could he ever had found her taste alluring? How could he ever have woken up in the morning missing her scent? How could he ever, in spite of her countless betrayals, wanted her back in his life? Because he had. Despite all promises he’d made himself, despite her betrayals, it had hurt when he’d walked away from her… and hurt more when she hadn’t followed.

 

An old wound now… but one that still itched sometimes early in the morning.

 

Talia reached up to cup his cheek – sharpened nails grazing against his flesh through the course growth on his cheek – and attempted to deepen the kiss. Tongue, saliva, and more alpha hormone. He allowed the violation of his lips, let her force open his jaw a notch, but did not respond.

 

She retreated with a wry laugh. “You’ve lost your taste for me. Don’t deny it, Beloved.”

 

He didn’t.

 

“To think, all those years, all your speeches,” her fingers ghosted once more over his cheek, “it was brute force that finally tamed you. How many times did you tell me you would never kneel? How many years did you resist your instincts? And all it took was someone physically stronger than you to put you on your knees.”

 

He swallowed, the blade pinching against the flesh of his throat. Didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to respond to her, didn’t want to rise to her backward beliefs, didn’t want to do anything but carry his daughter away from here alive.

 

Talia seemed to read something from the motion. “You are a good omega, Bruce. You never wished to be. You fought it. But your instincts are true to your caste and your nature befitting of your purpose.” The hand was getting more confident touching his cheek, fingers snaking down to touch his omega gland. “See how you cannot bear my taste when you used to hunger for it?” She continued. “That is because you are mated now. Mated and bound. So you serve and reserve yourself for your alien alpha.”

 

“I serve no one,” he spoke without thinking. Regretted it almost immediately.

 

Her lips twitched towards a smile. Pleased to get a rise out of him. “Ah, Beloved. You still want to play the part of the fool?”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

“You bear his child,” she began, “you accommodate his pleasure, you resist the advances of other alphas even alphas you know who are of a higher rank.” A small victorious smile. “You deny it. You’ve always denied it. But you know your place, Bruce. You know what you are and what that means. You’ve always known you live at the whim of the alpha strong enough to claim you.”

 

“I am no prize.”

 

A light laugh. “On the contrary, Beloved. You are an omega strong enough to hold an entire city in your grasp. You are an omega beautiful enough you were desired even when you posed as a beta. You are an omega of a level worthy enough to be chosen to mingle your blood with that of al Ghul. You are a prize. A _grand_ prize. Far more than those fools in your city even know. You have always been. And you know it.” She studied him. “Or you did.”

 

“I am no prize,” he repeated.

 

“You used to dominate and spurn your caste mates,” Talia began to explain, trailing her fingers over his lips. “Omegas, you would tell me, were weak. You used to tell me they deserved their fate. They let it happen to them. Interesting wording, no doubt, but true. Omegas instinctually give themselves to alphas worthy – or in your alien’s case strong – enough to claim them. The way other omegas would surrender to their instincts with alphas so far below your calibre I can only assume would appear weak to you.”

 

“I thought they deserved the discrimination they received for conforming to society’s stereotypes,” Bruce said softly.

 

“Do you still think that?” She asked, the sword leaving this throat as her fingers traced the shape of his jaw where it became neck. “That omegas deserve to be lesser?”

 

“Sometimes,” he admitted.

 

“You should. It’s true.”

 

“No,” he whispered. “It isn’t.” He used to believe it. He used to believe it with bitter black devotion. He still sometimes returned to those old well-worn lines of thought. But it wasn’t true. Omegas didn’t deserve discrimination because some appeared to let it happen to them. Omegas weren’t weak just because most were naturally sexually submissive.

 

Clark had told him that and Tim proven it.

 

“Omegas are not lesser.”

 

Talia clucked her tongue and flicked his bottom lip with the tip of her sword, nicking him. He wasn’t sure if the punishment was for speaking against her or merely for her pleasure. She’d always enjoyed blood play. Either way he didn’t lick his lip, a motion he knew she found attractive.

 

“You bear his child,” Talia said, sharper this time. “How can you rationalise your argument with his use of your body – for both his pleasure and his bloodline – when you stand bloated and deformed with the product of his seed?” Her gaze was piercing. “You are built to bear. That is your purpose. Any creature that bears for another is subservient. That is a law of nature not even you can change.”

 

“Were you subservient to me when you bore my child?” Bruce challenged.

 

Talia’s eyes widened then narrowed to slits. Cold and black. “That was our own abomination.”

 

“Boys,” Bruce corrected her, his resolve to be unresponsive weakening against those words. “They were boys. Baby brothers. Not abominations.”

 

“Now they are both dead,” she snapped and her composure cracked for the first time. “One by my own hand. The universe has a way of emending our mistakes.”

 

He didn’t bother correcting her. She had lost any right she had to Damian long ago. If she believed him dead he would not correct that oversight. If it kept her away from him then all the better.

 

Talia sighed and moved around him. He turned his head to watch her.

 

She moved with practised lethal grace. Black reinforced leather, scabbard swinging from hips abnormally broad for an alpha, and hair pinned in a complex bun. From the back of her belt a gem hung on a golden chain.

 

He could practically smell the magic coming off it.

 

“I seek to remedy our mistakes, Beloved,” she said as she turned back and studied his pregnant form. “Now that the alien has proven it’s not too late we will try again to create an heir the way nature always intended us to.”

 

“It was not my will to have a child with you a decade ago, Talia. It is not my will now.”

 

“Your will, Beloved, is clearly something that changes. You willed you would never let an alpha own you. Yet here you stand; marked, addicted, and carrying the alpha’s hybrid spawn into the world. You willed you would never give us an heir to al Ghul, yet you have already been the father to two. You willed yourself to be seen as something other than an omega in need of alphas, yet now that is what you are to this city.” She tilted her head to the side. “I imagine your will will change again. I merely seek to govern the direction of that change. Walk with me.”

 

“Your will’s changed too,” he said, ignoring the order. “You told me once you hated being your father’s almost perfect heir. You hated being trapped under the heel of his boot. You hated not being free.” 

 

“My mission has never changed, Bruce. I sought a better world then and I continue to do so now. A world where criminals suffer the justice deserved to them, where we evolve into greater beings through the blood of the worthy, and where the house of al Ghul maintain the peace and prosperity without hindrance from corrupt world orders.” Again. “Walk with me.”

 

“You seek to overthrow democracy with barbarism.”

 

“Democracy was invented thousands of years ago in theory but has never worked in practise.”

 

“Because people like you won’t let her work.”

 

“Ah,” she smiled and twisted her sword through the air before him. “There is the omega I know. Beautiful but misguided. Gnashing your teeth at the world simply for being the way it is. Democracy should work, omegas should fight to be equal, life should be fair.” Sadly. “I began to believe we could change things once. I loved you a way an alpha should never love an omega. I kept your children and was mother to one. I defied father as I’d always dreamed… and I defied nature. But we are old now, Beloved. Too old for such fantasies.” She took a step back toward him, sword at the ready. “I am an alpha, but I am also a woman. I cannot be my father’s heir. My father is weak, his seed damaged, and shall die soon. But he needs an heir. A true heir. A boy. An alpha. A high level. Born of an omega and sired by the line of al Ghul.” A long look. “Our baby, Bruce. Our king to inherit the world.”

 

“That was never our dream.”

 

“No. But it should have been.” The sword touched back against his neck. “Walk with me.”

 

He studied the look in her eye and tried to reconcile that with his memories of the woman he’d fallen for a decade earlier. He couldn’t. There was a light missing from her gaze, a looseness lost around the edges of her lips, and a wilful savage beauty that had escaped her.

 

The first time he’d met Talia she’d captured him with a look. An alpha of a level to rival his own, a woman more beautiful than any he’d ever seen, and a key member of the shadowy organisation that said they’d train him despite his caste. He hadn’t known then – sitting at Ra’s al Ghul’s table long rectangular table – that he was being offered to her as a gift. He hadn’t known his training was an ‘audition’ for a place at Talia’s feet. For the honour of bearing her children. He hadn’t known the only reason her father hadn’t attempted to take him to bed was his own Lazarus mutated sperm now near incapable of producing viable children. All he’d known was what he’d seen… and he’d seen her.

 

After dinner that night he’d met her in the corridor and without a word dragged her into a fierce kiss. That kiss had evolved into a messy grope. A messy grope that had somehow turned into sex stolen in a nearby and suspiciously vacant yet well-furnished bedroom. Over the next weeks they’d come to know each other more intimately than he thought possible. He shared himself and his desires with her and, in return, she let him live out his earliest fantasies of sexual dominance. Despite their castes a deeply buried part of her seemed to like it… the same part of her that moaned deep and greedy when she was penetrated.

 

Before her sex had been a bodily function. A defiant and often uncomfortable exploration of the female alpha caste and his own needs as a man and an omega. But together they were the perfect odd couple. The unlikeliest of dance partners spinning to their own private waltz. Mismatched – broken they thought – but finding a kind of salvation in the feelings of each other’s bodies and the open exchange of prejudices and ideals. He’d told her how he thought omegas weak, deserving of their oppression, and she’d told him how she hated the systems of the world. The systems of caste, both sexual and otherwise, and the concessions that allowed people to pollute the evolutionary future of the human race.

 

They’d been young and felt like visionaries not two broken souls seeking blind justification in each other.

 

Then he’d found out what she and her father had planned… both for him and the world. After one last strange confusing night together he left and their dance had ended. Now she was back not to rekindle the flame of their long dead love affair, not to challenge Batman Inc., but to attempt to again justify herself in him. To be that perfectly imperfect couple again; united as much by their hatred for the world as their love for each other. To take to the floor in one last dance.

 

But Bruce didn’t step to her order. Wouldn’t allow himself to be lead out of the cave… wouldn’t move out of the reach of his pack and mate.

 

“I believed omegas allowed themselves to be oppressed,” Bruce said softly. “Part of me still believes that. Part of me still hates them for that.” Without looking away from her. “If omegas showed the world they were strong, if they took the agency needed to guide their own lives, then Joe Chill would have shown me no prejudice the night my parents died. If omegas were equal to alphas then I would have been killed alongside them and none of this…” he gestured at the cold blackness of the cave around him. “…would have happened. It would all have ended when and where it was meant to.” Before the cave was a base for Batman it was a place he would retreat in the depths of his childhood depression. A cold dark place full of what he feared the most – bats – where he punished himself for being an omega… for being a _typical_ omega in distress and letting them die. A place where he’d taught himself to be something – anything – other than himself. An alpha vigilante, a beta playboy, an omega that bit back… anything but a bitch that stood back and cried for help from two alphas that needed Justice… not another piece of property to sell into a reasonable marriage when he came of age.

 

“I was wrong,” he pushed past those dark thoughts. Pushed through the bleak black place that had consumed much of his early years. “We both were. We were young, proud, and wanted a way out. An explanation that let us point fingers and made everything make sense. A world where we’d been dealt great injustices brought about by the failings of society; you by being a woman of your father’s house and me by being an omega in mine.” Softly. “The world isn’t so simple, Talia. Blame isn’t so easy. I think I always knew that but…”

 

“It was simple,” Talia hissed, her sword once more dropping from his neck, order forgotten. “It can be.”

 

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

 

She seemed off balance for the first time since stepping back into his life. “I…”

 

“You could have had it,” he reminded her. “You could have had me, under your terms.”

 

She tilted her head to one side. “Could I?”

 

“Less than two years after I left I called you…”

 

Her eyes sparked with the memory. “You were broken,” she told him. “I am your alpha. Not your healer. I did not need to hear or see you in such a state.”

 

He felt the first sting of true anger surface at her words.

 

“My back was broken,” Bruce growled. “Broken by an alpha that, afterwards upon discovering my level and caste, killed two of his men for not informing him. If he’d known what I was sooner he would have raped me. Perhaps kept me and raped me.” A hard look. “He was furious he’d marred such a... _valuable_ unclaimed possession. Furious that I was no longer _comfortably_ useable.”

 

“If I’d known it was an alpha that harmed you, Beloved, I would ha—”

 

“I did not need you to avenge your damaged property,” Bruce snapped. “I needed _you_. And you never came.”

 

Bane broke him not just in body but spirit. He’d felt for months like he had in the alley when his parents were murdered. He felt lost alone and frightened. He felt weak… for the first time since he was eight years old he wanted someone strong to walk into his life and put it back together. A moment of traitorous weakness he’d never admitted out loud. Not even to himself. He’d wanted her to come back… for him… for her omega. But she never did.

 

“You didn’t need me,” Talia finally said. “What use would I have served?”

 

Sharply. “I thought I loved you.” The confession hurt more than he’d thought it would. Not because it was an admittance of weakness, not because it was his gross failure in judgement, not because of what she’d done to him... but because it was true.

 

“Didn’t you?”

 

He met her gaze. Let it calm him. Let it remind him these wounds were healed and the fault that had caused them removed from his life. She was removed from his life. “In a way,” he muttered. “But, there are lots of different types of love. The love I felt for you was not true. I didn’t know that until…”

 

“Until you met your alien?”

 

“Until Alfred cared for me when you refused to. Until I found Dick, then Jason…”

 

“Your loyal allies?” She said coolly. “Where are they now? Your butler? Your first adopted son?” A hard look. “Jason?”

 

He didn’t say anything, carefully taking note of her shift in tone. She knew something he didn’t. Or, at least, she thought she did. As skilled in deception Talia was she had a weakness, inherited from her father, for boosting. If he left silence for her to fill he had little doubt that she would fill it.

 

True to his calculations, she continued. “Your allies are not here, Bruce. Alas, not even your alien is here.” She reached around and toyed with the amulet hanging off the back of her belt. “I brought my best tools today in the hopes of running into him. And Jason… I picked him up off the streets.”

 

“Jason…” he echoed. She was wrong. Jason was with the family. Which meant… _Dick_. “You have him?”

 

“Not for the first time,” she said with a wry smile.

 

He thought about the coordinates the computer had tracked the previous call back to. It was close. Very close. A spot he thought was just wilderness a couple of miles shy of his property’s edge. No doubt that was Talia’s retreat plan. After capturing him she planned to go there where Dick was almost certainly being held captive.

 

She knew Jason. She’d all but resurrected Jason. She would know she’d made a mistake the second she looked at her captive. Would she show Dick mercy once she realised it wasn’t Jason she had behind bars?

 

He swallowed.

 

“I don’t fear my caste anymore, Talia,” he said, seeking to draw the conversation back and perhaps delay her further from her retreat. “And that is the real reason you’ve come back.” He stepped forward. “You could have come back. I loved you. I would have let you into my life here and, if you’d convinced me, I would have let you take me away again. Despite what you did.”

 

Her brows drew together. “I did nothing to you you didn’t want.”

 

“You did a lot to me I didn’t want,” he corrected her bluntly. No anger. No aggression. Just a simple statement of fact. “But, after Bane broke me, I wouldn’t have cared. If you’d come back, if you’d asked me, I would have spent that time recovering bearing you a child. I don’t like to admit it… but I know it’s true. I needed someone and if that was the price for you… I would have paid it then. I would have paid it willingly, Talia.” The words were dry, wretched, and pained. “And I think you knew that. You knew I was desperate. You knew you could have manipulated me then.”

 

“You were broken.”

 

“When had your family ever backed down just because an enemy is weakened?”

 

She didn’t say anything.

 

“I swore to you I would never kneel. I swore I would never kneel to any alpha.”

 

“Yet you…”

 

“I have kept that promise. But if you’d come to me then I would have kneeled. I would have crawled if you’d asked me to. But you didn’t come. You didn’t come because you wanted to be the one that broke me and you couldn’t bear the idea of another alpha doing it in one night.” He kept his voice level as he spoke. “You wouldn’t come when an alpha had hurt me… but you come now when I’ve welcomed one into my life, when I’ve decided to have a child, when I’ve fallen in love not because I’m bearing a child… but because I’m not afraid anymore. I’m not angry anymore. I’m not _you_ anymore.”

 

“That is enough,” she said sharply. “I think it’s time we go.”

 

“You were always afraid of your caste,” he pushed, feet planted, “just like me. I thought being an omega made me weak and you thought being an alpha had failed to make you strong. You would have been the perfect heir to your father if only you were male. You are an alpha, a high level, and you’re not made or deformed like most of his offspring.”

 

“You know none of this.”

 

“I lay with you, Talia. I know you like to take an omega inside of you. I know the shame you felt about that. The shame you still feel.”

 

“You know none of this!”

 

“We fell in love because we were both suffering but now I’ve moved on… I’m not suffering anymore… and you can’t stand it.” A long look. “That’s why you’re here now.”

 

“I’m here because I know you can still bear children.”

 

“When it was revealed to the world I was an omega you knew – the world knew – I was still having heats. It was a headline, Talia, and I know you can read fine print. When you dropped Damian off you would have been able to smell it on me. You knew then that I was still having heats. You could have even be able to smell that I was no longer unclaimed. No, the reason why you’re here is because I’m happy. I’m having a child, I’m sleeping in the same bed with a mate I’ve chosen, I’m _with_ an alpha and in love with myself all of my own violation. No drugs, no trickery, no lies. And you can’t stand it.”

 

“I… I don’t…” Talia stared at him as she struggled to defend herself from the accusation. She couldn’t. It was the truth. Bitter, hard. The kind of truth one never wants to know. The kind of truth that hurt even as it exposed.

 

He knew the feeling.

 

In the last years, the last months especially, Clark had been slowly but surely pulling him out of his own constructed and construed perceptions of sexual castes and self-image. It hadn’t been pleasant – confronting the lies one told oneself rarely was – but he hadn’t realised he was in such a dark place until Clark coaxed him towards the light.

 

He’d been a coward. A self-important, desperate, petty coward who hadn’t wanted to face a world without justice, purpose, or someone to blame. So he’d clung to his hatred for sexual castes, for his own wilfully weak caste mates, and for the world in which allowed there to be such gross inequality and unfairness. Those attitudes hadn’t just hurt him. He’d unwittingly condemned Jason to a bondless childhood, locked Dick into a pack so starved and isolated the boy had initiated a sexual romantic relationship with his adoptive brother, and held Clark at arm’s length for years. One of the kindest, brightest, lights to ever enter his life… if not also the most frustrating man he’d ever known.

 

He couldn’t hold onto his childish prejudices in the wake of his mate’s and his pack’s insistent honest truth… and perhaps neither could Talia.

 

“I don’t want to fight you anymore,” Bruce admitted softly. “I don’t want to do this.”

 

The sword was digging into his throat before he had a chance to blink. “Neither do I, Beloved,” Talia said softly. “But it is not just omegas who are slaves to the order of things. I have a purpose, I have to fill it, and it is time you help me do that.”

 

This time the pressure against his flesh was too hard to ignore. He moved, forced by the threat of the blade, back towards the shadowy recesses of the cave Talia had emerged from.

 

Quickly he dropped the first baterang into his fist and threw it towards the alpha.

 

She ducked expertly out of the way, the sword never leaving his neck.

 

The baterang spun away to dig into the batcomputer with a solid sound. Buried into the equipment and wobbling slightly from the impact.

 

“Is that all, Beloved?”

 

He didn’t move.

 

A dull laugh. “My, you have gotten old,” she checked his wrist and quickly relieved him of his other two weapons before patting him down to make sure he wasn’t carrying anymore. She didn’t find any but did find his GCPD GPS tracking anklet and remove it with a twist of her sword. “You do like your toys,” she remarked coolly as she flicked away the gadgets. “I must admit they have their place. But a sword never fails.”

 

“A sword is always a failure,” he said softly.

 

There was no epic battle. No heroic speeches. No duel of the fates… and perhaps that was fitting. They weren’t Batman and Leviathan just then. They weren’t hero and villain. They were just two bygone lovers caught in an orbital collision course. He was emerging from the loveless abyss of their abandoned affair and she tainted by the petty need to keep him in the dark place they found each other. It wasn’t the kind of story that deserved anything as satisfying as a decent end. It wasn’t the kind of conflict that warranted a winner.


	29. Chapter 29

Dick stood in front of a sea of screaming faces. Red cheeks balled into tight knots above gaping mouths, microphones waved out of the mass of bodies like the pods of a sprouting tree, and cameras – everything from tinny phones to things with lenses the size of red solo cups – glared with insistent demand. All of it directed towards him and pressed so close together the different organisations, well-wishers, and protesters meshed together into a single grotesque beast. A media monster that reared towards him and demanded answers, attention, and adoration with tens of tongues. An unbreakable blockade between him and Wayne Enterprises.

 

“Grayson!”

 

“Richard Grayson!”

 

“Where were you, Mr Grayson?”

 

“Mr Grayson!”

 

“Where were you?!”

 

“I… I…” Dick’s eyes flicked from point to point in the swell of bodies and he felt the first fizzy bubbles of panic begin to rise up his body. “I don’t…”

 

“You don’t what, Richard?”

 

“I…”

 

He, unlike Jason and Tim, never minded the little bit of extra fame being Bruce Wayne’s ward, then son, bought him. He’d missed the attention of a crowd when he left the circus and it was comforting to get it again whenever he walked to a red carpet into a Wayne Foundation party. Cameras would flash, people on the street side would point him out, and the gossip media threw wild accusations as often as fevered compliments. He’d loved it. The fun, the ridiculousness, the _show_ that was so… circus.

 

The best part of it was they were famous enough to be photographed and – occasionally – written about but not famous enough to be stalked or harassed on day to day business.

 

That was until Batman Inc., Leviathan, and the already infamous kidnapping and omega poisoning hit the stands.

 

“I… I’m sorry…” Dick didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry I… please… I didn’t… it…”

 

“Where were you?” Demanded a woman with an official looking name tag.

 

“Where were you when your pack omegas were poisoned?” Another added their own voice.

 

“What were you doing when terrorists attacked Gotham?!” Shouted a third. “When they attacked your pack?”

 

“Who were the strange alphas with your family?”

 

“What have you been doing, Mr Grayson?!”

 

“Where’s Batman Inc? Why isn’t Batman stepping in?”

 

“Why was your fiancé with your pack when you weren’t?”

 

“Why do you have blood on your hands?”

 

“I…” Dick shook as his gaze spanned from one camera to another. “I’m sorry I…”

 

“Jesus! Give the man some room!” Commissioner Gordon appeared at his side reeking of angry alpha and flashing teeth under the unkempt hedge of an orange grey moustache. “This is a family affair! Back up. All of you. Now. Come on.”

 

Dick sent the man a relieved look as he hugged the blanket – a meagre piece of protection against the world and an even poorer cover up for the remains of the Nightwing costume he still wore beneath it – around his shoulders and pressed in as close as he dared to the dark eyed policemen. Gordon had never been as big or tall as Bruce even in his prime but something about the way the commissioner stood and moved made him seem massive. Like Dick was a kid again looking up at the man that had come to take him away from the circus after his family died.

 

“Come with me,” was all Bruce had said that day. The same words Commissioner Gordon was saying now as he looked over his shoulder at Dick. And, just like that day, without question or hesitation, he obeyed.

 

 _“We have all within us a measure of instinctual obedience.”_ The voice was metallic and cheap. A prerecording from a speaker. _“Even first pack alphas and pack leaders have within them the desire to obey for the structure of the pack.”_

 

Dick limped after Gordon through the square corridors of New Wayne Tower. He knew his way better than the man he followed but didn’t have the energy or sense of self just then to take charge, step forward, and pick his own way through the militaristic laboratories.

 

“I-is Bruce going to be okay?” He asked as they walked.

 

Jim Gordon didn’t look over his shoulder as they moved. “I don’t know.”

 

“Is he… is he going to be in trouble,” Dick tried instead, keeping his blanket hugged tightly around himself. “I don’t know w-why you put the anklet on him but you know he didn’t take it off and you know the…”

 

“That’s for the courts to decide.”

 

Dick shivered. “The courts? They hate him. They’ve always hated him.”

 

“He won’t get the same judge as last time he stood trial,” Gordon tried to reassure him. “It’s not…”

 

“What the hell has he done?”

 

The policemen paused outside a lab door and pinched the bridge of his nose under the frame of his glasses. The door he’d stopped outside was where the audio recording was coming from. Muffled but still clear enough to make out the pointed notes of the speaker’s personal inflections.

 

_“…speak of pack as if it’s a concept we all know. But what about those born out of pack society? Roughly one fifth of all children are. What about those raised outside it? One tenth are.”_

 

“Honestly, Dick,” Jim answered. “I don’t even know anymore.” Raw and honest. “That man – your father – has always been… something. Even back when we all thought he was a beta with nothing better to do than host parties, steal away omegas, and drink wine he was… something. Now he’s something else. You're all something else and…” the man shook his head. “I’m not sure I want to think too deeply about what that is. The more I think about it the more confused I am.”

 

Through the door. _“The concepts involved could be very confusing to those who haven’t opened their eyes, or had their eyes opened.”_

 

“What has he done?” Dick repeated the question.

 

“We’ve charged him with grand theft,” Gordon told him. “For accessing the robots before any contract of use was finalized between the company and Batman Inc.”

 

Dick stared, shook, and stared some more. “But he owns them…”

 

“The company owns them. Not him. He only owns fifty two percent of the company.”

 

His fist tightened in the blanket. “A-after this? You’re doing this to us after everything we’ve been through? You’re doing this after… why can’t you just leave us alone? Do you have _any_ idea about what… what I…” Damian. Ubu. Talia. “I… we… he…”

 

Gordon watched him. Waited.

 

“Why?” He settled on. “Why are you doing this?”

 

“It’s the law.”

 

“It’s messed up.”

 

Gordon nodded and looked down to the blood on Dick’s hands. “That it is.”

 

The dull blue pity in his eyes was too much to take.

 

“Thank you,” Dick managed to choke out. “I… tell Barbara I…” he couldn’t figure out the end of that sentence.

 

“I will,” Gordon assured him anyway.

 

Uncertainly. “T-thanks.”

 

The audio clip was still playing. _“Why is it we unite the concept of pack with words like ‘love’ and ‘freedom’ when pack by its very nature compels obedience?”_ The televised voice carried all the way down the corridor. _“Why are ‘lone wolves’ feared and shunned from society when all they are is independent of pack? Why do people in packs – something which on the outside seems so oppressive – report higher levels of happiness and wellbeing? Why are betas – the core of a pack – the caste that lives the longest? These are some of the questions that I hope to shed some light on in…”_

 

Dick took a deep breath, looked once more at Gordon, and walked into the lab. Immediately he was struck by the smells of his pack. Sweet, musky, clashing, coordinating… It was like rain after weeks of dry. Warmth after an endless cold. A more visceral joy than he’d felt in years.

 

Tim was the first that saw him. “Dick?”

 

He forced a smile. Weak and wavering. “Hey Timmy.”

 

Kon dropped his phone which had been playing a documentary – the source of the sound – and leapt to his feet. “You’re here! You’re okay! You’re…” the boy caught sight of the blood on Dick’s hands and the blanket hugged tight around his shoulders. “I… are you…?”

 

“Master Richard.” Alfred stepped forward and – without permission or apology – pulled him into a tight hug.

 

“Alfie. No. You’ll get blood…”

 

“Thank goodness you’re alright,” the butler breathed. “Thank goodness…”

 

“Grayson!”

 

That voice. _That_ voice. The voice he’d never thought he’d hear again pitched towards him with its usual level of regal childlike annoyance. _Damian_.

 

Dick practically fell out of Alfred’s embrace and flew across the room to the bedside of the boy glaring at him, angry, tired, and so beautifully wonderfully perfectly _alive_. “Hey,” he was afraid to speak too loudly in case this was some kind of dream and he woke himself up. “Hey…”

 

Damian scowled up at him with a face no longer round but armed with jutting cheekbones and decorated with a broad collection of nicks and bruises. There was a long scab on his bottom lip where he’d bitten through the skin, his fingers were more scrape than skin, and a large fresh bandage sat under his left arm. “Where did you go?” The boy asked, stiffly and slowly, as if speaking pained him.

 

Dick felt his body shiver with a soft nervous laugh. “I went looking for you.”

 

Damian’s eyes narrowed. “You looked for a long time and never read the news?”

 

“I…” Dick swallowed. “I stopped looking for you. I started looking for Talia.”

 

The boy snorted and immediately regretted it if the huge flinch was anything to go by. Nevertheless the boy ploughed on with the same dogged determination. “You’re not allowed to go looking for me again. Not with such poor resolve or lack of basic environmental analysis and information gathering skills.” A deep breath. “Even Drake would do better than that.”

 

“What do you mean _even_ Drake?” Tim shot across the room.

 

Damian didn’t dignify that with an answer. Instead he pointed at Dick’s bloody hands emerging from the loose embrace of the blanket. “What happened?”

 

Dick’s heart was immediately in his mouth. “I… Talia, she…” What could he say? He couldn’t tell a ten year old – not even this ten year old – about his quest to kill the boy’s mother. He couldn’t tell the boy the blood on his hands was the blood of his family. He couldn’t… “She um… she… I…” But could he lie? Could he really withhold the story – the whole story – from the boy whose life he’d decided to kill for? “She…”

 

Damian’s glare was as flat and intense as his father’s.

 

“…I thought you were dead,” Dick said at last. “So I…”

 

“You killed my mother.” It wasn’t a question.

 

“I wanted to,” Dick admitted softly, well aware the present pack was watching. “I wanted vengeance so...”

 

“Don’t lecture me on vengeance,” Damian said sharply, suddenly. “I know the meaning of the word.”

 

Dick. “I know.”

 

“I’m not a child. You don’t need to lie to me.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I know my mother was evil. I know that. I don’t need to be coddled.”

 

“I know.”

 

“So don’t tell me what vengeance means!” Damian suddenly yelled. “I know what it means when you take vengeance!”

 

Softly. “I know.”

 

He did. He’d known about vengeance – really known – since the police showed him Tony Zucco’s face in a mugshot photo when he was younger than Damian was now. He knew about vengeance, about pain, and the need to share the pain. He’d been living off the wretched thirst for vengeance the last few days like a madman living off moonlight.

 

He’d never thought about how Damian would have felt knowing Dick was hunting his mother. Hunting her with the intent to kill her.

 

To kill just like Tony Zucco had killed his parents.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

 

The first night he’d spent in Wayne Manor had been one of the worst of his life. He’d lain awake on the far left hand side of a bed bigger than any he’d ever seen, stared through darkness more absolute than he thought possible, and cried even though his eyes were think and couldn’t squeeze out anymore tears.

 

It was a kindness to himself forgetting them.

 

Not totally. Just the details. The shape of his mother’s face and the timbre of his father’s laugh. Little things like that hurt too much to hold onto. So he didn’t. He, unlike Bruce, deliberately let go of his parents in the aftermath of their death. He didn’t forget them – no, never that – but he didn’t cling to the memory of them either. It had been a coping mechanism rather than a lack of love and sometimes he regretted it. He regretted not being able to recall how his mother smelt, or if they were going to ask the pack for more children, or what their favourite food was.

 

The clearest memory he had of them was of them falling…

 

No child should have to forget their parents like that.

 

No child should have their parents, even the bad ones, stolen.

 

“You killed her,” Damian accused, voice laboured. “You killed her because you thought she’d killed me. Because she’s evil. You got your vengeance.”

 

“No,” he croaked. “No I…” wanted to. I tried to. I would have given anything to kill her. “…didn’t. I didn’t kill her.”

 

“She’d dead though,” Damian said, softer this time, “isn’t she?”

 

“I don’t know,” Dick answered honestly and looked down at the blood on his hands. “I don’t know.”

 

“Master Richard,” Alfred’s hand settled on his shoulder. Warm. Light. Comforting. Beyond the butler Tim and Conner were looking on with twin expressions of unease. “Start at the beginning.”

 

Dick looked from Alfred to Damian, sucked in a deep breath, and obeyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is so short and not my best work. I'll try and shape up a bit for the next chapter and the 'aftermath'.


	30. Chapter 30

“You were meant to protect him. You’re his alpha. It’s your _job_ to protect him!”

 

“No,” Clark rasped. “No it’s my job to l—”

 

“Don’t say love!” Jason yelled. “You d—”

 

“—listen to him,” Clark finished, eyes pivoting to rest on Jason. “I-I should have listened to him.”

 

“Listen?” He heard himself choke out the word. “ _Listen?_ Your mate is missing and you’re still worried about the surgery? About your fucking _fight?”_

 

Clark’s head swung from side to side. “No. T-that’s not it.”

 

“He’s your omega. He’s _bearing_ your _child!_ How fucked up do you have to be to leave him? I don’t care what the hell he said. I don’t care if h—”

 

“No,” interrupted him. “No. I listen. His heartbeat. His breathing. I usually listen but I always block him out when I’m angry. I just did it. I didn’t think…I should have… oh God…”

 

Jason could have strangled him. He wanted to. He wanted to make him understand. To punish him for his uselessness, for his unwitting betrayal, and for being unworthy of the man he’d mated.

 

When Jason had first known of Clark’s presence in Bruce’s life he’d hated him. Hated him with a bright bitter intensity he was only starting to regain after the deadening embrace of the Lazarus Pit. Clark was a distant all-powerful alpha then – a scent that stuck to Bruce’s skin – who without even showing his face was threatening with every passing month to move into his pack, his position, and his territory. He’d wanted Clark to leave then. He’d wanted him to vanish from Bruce’s life and never come back. Never share another heat. Never sully their pack omega’s scent. Never see or touch him again.

 

Now, somehow, the man had become an estranged arm of the family. Now him leaving Bruce was the betrayal.

 

“You left him.”

 

“I…” The man looked small, terrified, and utterly powerless standing in the middle of the cave. His civilian clothes were rumbled and open enough to expose the blue of his Superman suit, hair windswept back into a tangled mess of half curls, and hands shaking as he clutched the cut circlet of Bruce’s GPS anklet. “I don’t…”

 

“You don’t _leave_ ,” he snarled. “You stay, and you fight, and it hurts but you stay. That’s what you do. That’s what it means to be _with_ someone. That’s what you do for the person you love. You don’t just run away when things get hard!” His mind flashed for one traitorous second to Dick packing his bags for Chicago after their first night together. To Dick climbing out the apartment window after another fight. To Dick always coming and going from his life like the tide. “You don’t leave. You don’t…”

 

“I know.” Clark said. “I know I… should have listened…”

 

“Listen now,” Jason croaked the words. “His scent is fresh. He can’t be far. Find him.”

 

The man looked completely lost as he stared down at the anklet. “I can’t… I don’t…”

 

“Listen!”

 

When Jason arrived in the manor minutes before he’d been relived to find Bruce’s trail, hot and thick in the empty air of the abandoned house, making a predictable trek through the manor and down into the cave. Bruce’s scent – distinctive even among other high level omegas – wasn’t easy to miss and by the freshness and clearness of the trail he assumed the man had walked slowly in bare feet through the house. Perhaps upset but not stressed nor threatened. Safe.

 

All that had changed when he walked down into the cave.

 

Bruce’s scent thickened, sharpened, and then veered from the computer to the dampening pools where it vanished. Why would he dampen his scent? Why would he try and hide? He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t leave. He had to have been forced into that pool. He had to have been taken. Taken by Talia.

 

Now Jason stood in the cave, at the end of the scent. Useless. Hopeless. A coiled spring lost in a vacuum. No focal point, no traction…

 

“This has activated,” Clark said, staring down at the anklet. “I can hear it.”

 

“You’re meant to be listening for Bruce!”

 

“You said this was a police tracking device,” Clark said quickly. “You said Bruce was arrested. If that’s true then the police will be coming. Here. To the cave.”

 

Jason ran his fingers through his hair. “Put it upstairs then clean up our scents.” That’s what Bruce would say. That’s all there was to say.

 

Clark was gone and back in seconds. “Look, Jason, you have to tell me why he was arrested. This… this doesn’t make any sense.”

 

“For you,” Jason snapped. “He did it for you. To find you. Now you find him.”

 

Clark looked like Jason had just stabbed him. “For me? H-how?”

 

“It doesn’t matter!” He marched towards him. “He loves you! He didn’t leave you he…” something caught Jason’s eye.

 

A single baterang sticking out from among batcomputer monitors like a root breaking through a stone retaining wall. It wasn’t damaging anything. Instead it was perfectly targeted to sit upright and obvious against a particular segment of the screen.

 

Jason walked around Clark, approached the computer, and woke it up with his own passcode and body scan.

 

There was, as always, an outpour of information from the different monitors. But just beside the baterang there was a single string of coordinates pulled from what looked like a tracked call.

 

“That’s close,” Clark said, immediately working out what Jason was looking at. “Only a few miles away.”

 

“What’s there?”

 

Clark turned his head and squinted through the rock wall of the cave. It took him less than a minute to find what he was looking for. “An underground compound built into the cave system.”

 

“This cave system?”

 

“I don’t think the two meet but…” Clark’s eyes focused. “They’re there.”

 

“Bruce and Talia?”

 

“No,” Clark didn’t look away from the point in the wall. “Bruce and Dick.”

 

Jason’s heart twisted. “Dick’s there? He’s okay?”

 

“I… I can’t tell.”

 

“What do you mean you can’t tell?!”

 

Clark looked white. “He’s limping badly. There’s blood. There is blood on Bruce too. God, there’s… There are lead walls too. I can only see bits and pieces.” His eyes flicked back and forth, scanning the distant structure. “It’s okay. I can break in. I can get them.”

 

“No,” Jason grabbed Clark’s arm before he could vanish. “Take me.”

 

“I can…”

 

“No you can’t! She killed you once already!”

 

Clark didn’t have an answer for that.

 

“If there is lead walls then they planned for you. They’ll be green rocks or spells or whatever the fuck it is that knocks you off your high horse.”

 

“I’m not just leaving them there,” Clark said, the first forceful use of his voice since they’d entered the cave. “I won’t.”

 

“No we won’t. We… Tim,” Jason rasped.

 

“Tim?”

 

“He’ll know what to do,” Jason said, already frantically typing the boy’s number into the batcomputer. “He’s smart. He’s good at stuff like this.”

 

“I can get them, Jason.”

 

“You don’t know that!”

 

“Jason,” Clark grabbed his shoulders and spun him to face him. “They’re in danger.”

 

“I know that I…”

 

“I don’t have time for this,” the older alpha said. “Either you tell me right now what I should do to get them out without risking myself or I’m going in there and getting them.”

 

Jason stared. “Batsuit number eighteen,” he whispered. An idea. An idea that was probably a million times weaker than anything Bruce or Tim would come up with but an idea all the same.

 

Clark frowned. “What?”

 

“Bruce used to wear it when going up against radiation,” Jason explained. “I don’t know if it’ll stop magic but…”

 

Clark was gone and back in an instant, stripped to his underwear and wriggling into the black confines of the armour. It was heavier set than most of the bat gear with a full face mask and an open cape buckled at the shoulders instead of a cowl. Once it was closed it swallowed Clark’s scent without the need for a dampening pool; an air tight design that had already saved Bruce more than once.

 

Clark looked at his black gloved hands.

 

“Will it withstand force impacts?” The suit transformed the man’s voice into Batman’s. A low angry rumble.

 

“I don’t know,” Jason answered. “But you will.”

 

Jason didn’t get any armour on. All he did – all he could do – was grab Wingman’s belt and snap it shut around his waist. “You’re still taking me with you.”

 

This time Clark didn’t waste time fighting.

 

An arm wrapped around Jason’s middle and pulled him firmly against the hard bat branded breast of the suit. He wasn’t given a moment to regret his choice before the world disappeared into painful throb of air and a blur colour.

 

Then darkness, blood, and fear.

 

Jason wished he’d thought to bring a mask as he peered around dimly lit tunnels and tried to make sense of the sickening smells bombarding his senses.

 

Clark was kneeling at his feet. Crouched over the shape of…

 

“Bruce!” He touched the man all over. Searching for an injury. “Bruce? Are you okay?

 

The man was splashed with blood, clutching his middle, and sucking air through his teeth. “Suit eighteen,” he rasped, looking into the eerie white shine of Clark’s eyes. “I always hated suit eighteen.”

 

“Dick?” Jason asked.

 

“Left,” Bruce answered immediately. “Go.”

 

Jason didn’t need any more encouragement. He spun on his heels, turning away from the pair, and raced through the narrow interlocking causeway of tunnels. Dim lights hung from the ceiling lighting up just enough to reveal random pockets of space but not the different twists and turns of the passage ahead. It didn’t matter. Jason hadn’t gotten ten metres before he picked up Dick’s scent – a soft but playfully complex beta weave, touched with high notes of almost omega like allure, and stained with an ugly current of blood and fear – and followed it like a bloodhound.

 

Through the dark, through the doubt, through the fear.

 

Carried on by that smell.

 

When he found him Dick was standing unsteadily, all his weight on one leg, and clutching a long hooked blade in blood coated hands. His top half was bare and bruised, hair twisted with long staying damp, and calf wrapped in an impromptu bandage made from what looked like Bruce’s jumper.

 

He was not alone.

 

A male alpha – huge, tattooed, and void of any hair – swung a sword at Dick’s head. The beta blocked it but the force of the blow knocked him back against the stone walls with a yelp of pain and sent him crashing to the floor.

 

Jason didn’t think. He just charged the other alpha.

 

They crashed to the floor amid a flurry of short arm moves. Jason managed to break the man’s nose, bloody his mouth, and purple an eye before a punch landed on his broken ribs. They popped out of place with a stab of agonising pain and pressed against his lungs.

 

He stilled, gasping.

 

Immediately the assassin had his arms around his neck; an expert hold that twisted his head to the side and threatened to pop his brain stem from his spine. Pain surged through his jaw, fizzed white behind his eyes, and radiated up through his teeth. A pain more intense than he thought possible. A pain worse than dying.

 

All instincts told him to thrash and fight, to try to breathe against the weight of his now floating rib, and claw mindlessly at the man’s exposed skin. He battered them down and instead locked his forearm into the hold, stopping the man from breaking his neck, and pulled a single baterang from his belt.

 

He’d killed before. He’d killed more people than he was sure he remembered killing. But this was somehow different. This wasn’t him being told to kill. This wasn’t him punishing a bad person. This wasn’t anything he had a name for. Pure, hot, and frantic.

 

He drove the baterang into the man’s thigh, into the courseway of blood there, and felt the explosion of red against his body.

 

The man let go of Jason immediately, staggered back, and pressed his hands against the fountain erupting from his thigh. Red ran through his fingers, dripped down into a rapidly swelling puddle on the floor, and filled the air with the thick hot scent of life quickly morphing towards death.

 

If the man was concerned by the fatality of the wound he didn’t show it. Instead he smiled, small and knowing. “You’re the alpha.”

 

His lips peeled back to show his teeth more out of habit than anything else. “You’re dead!”

 

“Yes.” There was no fear in his voice. No sadness. Just a resigned statement of fact. “I am.”

 

Lower. “I killed you.”

 

The man’s eyes were a haunting black in the shadows of the cave. Light only capturing the broad expanse of his brow, the line of his nose, and the point of his cheekbones. “You did.”

 

“I did.” A realisation. “I did…” he hadn’t killed in over a year. He hadn’t…

 

Jason pushed aside that train of thought, rolled onto his back, and – with a stuttering groan of pain – pushed his rib somewhere closer to where it was meant to be. It crunched into place. Bone grating against bone. A moment of intense agony. Then nothing. Nothing but a dull sting and the memory of pain fading in the back of his mind.

 

“Jason?”

 

“Dick.”

 

He lurched to his feet feeling numb and sick as his victim rose, turned, and staggered away down the corridor; apparently resigned to both his defeat and his death but not content enough to let it happen in this particular patch of underground tunnel.

 

“Jason…” During the fight Dick had stood and approached. The curved sword shook in his hand. Blade rattling against the flimsy cross guard. “You… you… he… I… I was…”

 

“Dick…” Jason wanted to hold him. To clutch him, kiss him, and _feel_ him and nothing but him until the gross ugly mass of the world faded away. Until nothing else mattered but feathery touch of Dick’s hair, the stubbornly soft slide of his chin, and the agonising tremble of his lips.

 

He started towards him with every intension of doing just that. Of kissing him. Holding him. Loving him.

 

Instead he slapped him.

 

Dick dropped his sword, staggered back, and touched his reddening cheek in shock. “W-wh—?”

 

“Don’t leave,” Jason rasped before he knew what he was saying. “Not ever again. Don’t leave ever again.”

 

Dick stared at him, palm pressed against the side of his face.

 

“You hear me?”

 

Voice weak. “Jason, I…”

 

“If you need to go, take me with you. I will help you, whatever you want to do. I’ll be your Robin if you need. But don’t… don’t just leave.”

 

A pause. Long and heavy.

 

“Promise me.”

 

“I…” Dick was shaking. “I… I can’t promise you that…” his gaze was beyond Jason. Locked onto the wall over his shoulder. On the bloody pool Dick’s assailant had left behind. “I can’t…”

 

Jason felt a well of old battered pain turn over inside him. “I didn’t come her to kill him. I didn’t plan on it. I didn’t want it.”

 

“No,” Dick shook his head. “It’s not… I can’t, Jay. I can’t promise you I won’t leave. I can’t.”

 

The pain inside him turned putrid rotten. Frothed through his blood and prickled like bile on his tongue. “Then why the hell are we getting married?”

 

Dick’s hand dropped from his cheek to hang useless at his side. “It’s not…”

 

“That’s what marriage _is_ ,” Jason snarled. “A _promise_ not to _leave_.”

 

“Is that all marriage is to you?” Dick asked.

 

“That’s all it is,” he answered.

 

The silence that followed was like a carpet rolling down a foyer. Elongated and thin.

 

The beta still didn’t meet his eye. “What about the part about honouring and cherishing?”

 

“That’s…”

 

“What about celebrating love?”

 

“We…”

 

“What about caring for each other?”

 

“I do care about you!”

 

Dick looked at him. Finally looked at him. “Have I failed you that badly?” The question hung in the air. Not sharp or insulting but earnest, pained, and guilty. “Have I hurt you so much that you asked me to marry you just to make sure I don’t leave you again?”

 

Jason didn’t know how to answer that.

 

Dick wrapped his arms around himself and shook. “I thought I… no wonder you don’t want to romance me… no wonder you want this over as fast as possible… this isn’t a celebration to you is it? It’s a foundation. A safe guard to stop me from hurting y—” he broke off with a horse sob, tears trickling down from behind his mask. “Oh God Jay I’m s-so sorry.”

 

He should have kissed him. He should have held him, loved him, and forgiven him. He should have done all the things he was supposed to do the second he’d stood up and seen him standing with a shaking sword in his hand.

 

Jason tried to rectify the mistake. He tried to grab Dick, pull him into him, and press their lips together.

 

The beta stiffened in his arms and turned his face away. “No, Jay.”

 

“It’s okay. I didn’t mean it. I love you. I…”

 

“S-stop,” Dick pushed him. “We need to stop.”

 

An icy sliver down his spine. “What does that mean?”

 

“Please, Jay…”

 

“What does it mean?!”

 

“It means this is fucked up!” Dick cried, voice utterly ruined and tears escaping the bottom of his mask. “You just killed Ubu! You _killed_ him! And I… I almost… and here we are t-talking about our stupid not-even-marriage. This is such a fucking mess. Such a fucked up fucking mess.” Broken. “We’re such a fucked up fucking mess.”

 

Jason stood very still. “You’re leaving me.” It wasn’t a question.

 

Dick answered it anyway. “I don’t know, Jay. I don’t know. I love you, more than anything, but I… I don’t know…” he pried himself out of his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.”

 

And that was it. Jason could have lived with ‘I don’t know’. ‘I don’t know’ was a semicolon. ‘I don’t know’ could continue. But not an ‘I’m sorry’. ‘I’m sorry’ was a full stop. An ending. ‘I’m sorry’ meant, even if Dick hadn’t realised it yet, it was over.

 

“What happened?” Jason whispered. What happened that meant they could no longer go on? What had spelled their doom? What fault in the foundations had led to this long foreseeable collapse?

 

Dick sucked in a deep breath, peeled off his mask, and dropped it at his feet. “Talia bought Bruce here,” he began, taking the question for what it was. “It was his idea…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry the wait between chapters is longer than usual. I have quite a lot of projects going all at once right now so everything's moving just a tad slower.


	31. Chapter 31

He’d delayed as much as he could during the whole moving process – even lingering fully dressed in the stark itchy smell of the dampening pools – but despite his efforts it did not take long for Talia to transport him from the batcave to her own nearby underground tunnel system.

 

Talia was a brisk and brutal herder and wasn’t shy to nick him with the tip of her sword if she thought he was taking too long. By the time he was standing in the middle of her lair he had a cut on his chin, two more on his cheeks, and several on his arms. When he’d talked back to her orders or remarks he’d received marks in more sadistic places; between his fingers, under his eye, and on his omega gland. Each small stinging claims of ownership designed to punish and humiliate him as much as titillate her. He let her have her fun, deflecting only the blows that would land on his lower torso, and bearing the others without flinching.

 

In a small estranged way it was more of a victory than if he’d bounced back the blade, snarled, and started a fight. He was avoiding conflict to protect his child but wasn’t responding to her the way she wanted. He wasn’t giving her the victory nor the satisfaction she expected to receive in his moment. Instead he shut her out, mitigated her to a point of irrelevance, and in its place of attacking prolonged their interaction under the hope that – no matter what happened – his pack would come and he would get them _all_ out alive.

 

That included Dick. That included the girl. And, to his surprise, he found it included him as well.

 

He did not plan to martyr himself today. Not for his dignity, not for a grandiose version of her defeat, nor even to deal out retribution for the crimes she’d committed against him and his family in the past.

 

So he took her petty abuse without resistance or complaint until – with a hiss of frustration – she ordered him to match through the corridors until he arrived at a simple cement door. It was guarded by a massive man Bruce recognised from his skirmishes and campaigns against Ras al Ghul and, more distantly, from the time he’d spent as a novice in the League of Assassins.

 

“Ubu,” Bruce named him.

 

The man tipped his head with no hesitation or hypocrisy. “My Lady’s.”

 

That simple token of what Ubu deemed to be respect stung more than Talia’s cuts ever could. A primitive verbal honorific that, in one foul swoop, tagged him as both an object and owned. A piece of property that should be delighted by the elevated position his apparent mating bought him. An omega like the kind he’d rejected and distanced himself from his entire life.

 

But, that too, he bore without a wince.

 

“Ubu,” Talia spoke as if Bruce hadn’t. “This is, as you know, my mate. I expect you to ensure he receives the upmost care during his confinement. Make sure all his needs are met, allow him some consumable luxuries, but please ensure he is fed in a manner that does not give him access to handle tools. No knives. No forks. No spoons. He’s not to be trusted with any of it.”

 

“Yes, My Lady.”

 

Talia straightened as if inflated by his acknowledgement of her command. “Furthermore, he is to be given no assistance during his imminent birth unless it becomes clear it endangers his own life. If he asks for help remind him I did put him in a position where the removal of the alien offspring would have been quick and painless...” she sent Bruce a pointed look, “and he turned that gift down.”

 

He didn’t react or respond to the threat.

 

Talia’s lips thinned and gaze flicked back to Ubu. “Do you understand?”

 

Again. “Yes, My Lady.”

 

“Good. Do not underestimate him, especially here. We should move out in less than an hour.”

 

Bruce’s brain snapped onto the new piece of information. Time was his most pressing resource right now. One he was trying to elongate and preserve. Learning roughly how much he had left was a valuable secret.

 

Would less than an hour be enough?

 

Talia began to push him forward but this time he planted his feet and resisted earning himself another quick cut on the crest of his collarbone. He ignored the pain. “I want to see Jason.”

 

“Ah,” Talia’s eyes shifted from annoyance to interest. “Yes, Jason. Thank you, Beloved. I had almost forgotten.” She turned to Ubu. “Where is the boy?”

 

For the barest flicker of a moment Ubu’s composure seemed to stiffen then, with all apparent propriety, he waved at the door he guarded. “In here.”

 

Talia’s eyebrows seemed to descend and arch all at once. Something she’d inherited from her father. “This is not a cell.”

 

“He was difficult to detain.”

 

“He will be harder,” Talia pointed her sword at Bruce. Another nick on the side of his neck. “Are you up for the challenge?”

 

“Yes, My Lady.”

 

“Fail me on this and you will die,” she promised.

 

Ubu had a strange look in his eye. A dark knowing acceptance. “Yes, My Lady.”

 

Bruce zeroed in on that look.

 

Ubu wasn’t an easy man to read. Never had been. In the past Bruce had assumed that trait stemmed from his unashamed and fanatical devotion to the League of Assassins. Ubu believed in the law of al Ghul with such certainty that he never bothered to doubt or second guess his orders. It was questionable as to if he even thought about them at all beyond the divining the best possible method to carry them out. Why would he? To his mind, they were nothing short of divine mandate.

 

But now something had changed.

 

Bruce didn’t need three guesses to figure out what.

 

The man had been raised his entire life worshiping one man. Ra’s al Ghul. The rightful king of the world.

 

His daughter had always been just that; his daughter. As a high level alpha void of any deformities Talia was allowed to live, join the ranks of the assassins, and ultimately become a General in the al Ghul army. But she was not a man. She was not an heir. She was not worthy of the demon.

 

She was not Ra’s al Ghul.

 

Bruce would be surprised if the man wasn’t feeling discontent under Talia’s thumb given the cult he was born and raised in. But that look wasn’t just discontent. It was acceptance. Acceptance of an imminent death.

 

Ubu thought he was about to die. Either via execution or struck down by the demon through an impending and unstoppable twist of fate. The only reason he would think that was if he believed he’d knowingly committed a crime against the al Ghul bloodline. The only crime Bruce could possibly imagine him committing was one he believed might remove Talia from power and reinstate her father.

 

Had he armed Dick? Had he deliberately locked him in this particular room? Had lied to her about Dick’s identity? Did that somehow give Dick an advantage over Talia? Did Dick have a greater opportunity to hurt her if his identity was not known?

 

He didn’t have the answers. There were too many variables. But he could guess that, whatever it was, Dick was involved.

 

There was some plan here. Some plan that, perhaps, was already going astray.

 

Talia clucked her tongue. “Move the boy to the cells.” She pushed Bruce forward a step. “I will do the same with this one.”

 

He resisted. “I want to talk to him,” Bruce said again. Louder. Deliberately loud and pitched to carry. “I’m not moving until you open that door.”

 

“Bruce!” Dick’s voice rang out in answer. Horse and pained.

 

“Jason.”

 

“Are you…?” The beta began.

 

“I’m okay. Are you?”

 

“Yes.” Dick answered, voice thin. “Yes…”

 

“What happened?”

 

 _“Tt,”_ Talia cut him once more, on the tip of his thumb, and gestured towards the door. “Very well. I suppose you two do have a lot to talk about. Perhaps Jason may even be interested in telling you about his time with the League.” To Ubu. “Open the door. I don’t want to leave them in there alone together.”

 

Once more. “Yes, My Lady.”

 

The speed by which he obeyed made Bruce wonder for a moment if he hadn’t miscalculated. Perhaps Ubu was loyal to the bone. Perhaps he didn’t care which al Ghul led him. Perhaps there was no plan.

 

But then Ubu unlocked the door. The moment it began to open Dick slipped out as fluid as a shadow and with premeditated lethal grace leapt towards Talia.

 

Bruce didn’t have time to think.

 

He didn’t have time to rationalise, reason, or strategize.

 

All he did – all he could do – was act.

 

He lurched forward and grabbed Dick; dragging him off course and into his embrace. The beta’s forward momentum sent them both tumbling backwards and his own weight and sideways impetus drove them hard into a protruding shelf of cave rock.

 

Pain ripped through him. Sudden, sharp, and real enough to draw a strangled cry from between his lips.

 

A cry that on the inhale brought with it Dick’s scent. Frantic, afraid, but so like that of the boy he’d brought home from the circus. Heightened with adulthood and the identifying friendly musk of his caste but still, under it all, the same.

 

His first. The boy that had tumbled without prelude into his life, filled it with bright vibrant colour, and slotted himself into the empty place between Alfred and Bruce that meant the three of them could be a pack. His first pack since his parents died. A pack all his own.

 

They crashed to the floor clutching each other. Dick’s hair damp against Bruce’s cheek, skin bare for the expanse of their embrace, and body cold and shivering under Bruce’s touch. The hard shape of Dick’s mask digging into his neck told him all Bruce needed to know about how the man had been able to avoid the robots.

 

Nightwing. He’d sent them to hunt Batman… not Nightwing.

 

Bruce could have laughed if his teeth weren’t clamped tight together trying to ride through the wash of ebbing pain radiating through his body. A strange muddy kind of pain that throbbed not just from his newly won bruises but from a new twisting line of agony – a tear – between his belly and his lower back.

 

“Bruce! Oh God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Why did you do that? Why would you… Oh. Oh fuck. Bruce.” Dick hauled him up into a sitting position against the wall where Bruce finally managed to swallow down the worst of the pain and blink his eyes back into focus.

 

Dick was kneeling before him, the top half of his uniform cut away, and fresh blood smeared on the palm of one hand.

 

He studied the beta’s body, looking for the wound where that blood came from, and found a long straight gash in his calf. “You’re hurt,” Bruce rasped and started working off his jumper. The cut didn’t look like it was still bleeding but evidently it was and any would was better covered than not. “How long – _ah_ – ago was that?”

 

“N-no,” Dick stammered. “No I don’t think…”

 

“That,” Talia said very softly, standing where she had been the entire time. “Is not an alpha, Ubu.”

 

“No, My Lady,” the man agreed.

 

“You lied to me.”

 

“Yes, My Lady.”

 

“Why?”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

Talia hissed through her teeth and drew up her sword to press it against his throat. “The most loyal servant they call you. The most worthy assassin. Tell me, is it my father’s freedom you seek in this betrayal or is it just the bewitching blue eyes of this beta that has you so enamoured?”

 

Ubu didn’t answer.

 

“Yes,” Talia sneered. “You thought me ignorant? No. My father told me of your desires. You are an alpha. A high level. Yet you debase yourself by admiring those who should be as furniture to you.”

 

Ubu. “I have not felt that failing since I was a boy.”

 

“Then why does he live?!”

 

“Bruce!” Dick’s hands were now both red with blood and eyes wide.

 

“Take this,” Bruce pushed his jumper towards him and began trying to tie it around his bloody calf. “It’ll help. I’ll…”

 

“N-no. No, it’s n-not me, Bruce,” Dick stammered. “It’s you.”

 

“It’s…” the meaning of those words settled on him like weight. Cold. Heavy. Terrifying. _No…_ Bruce reached down between his legs, around the restrictive bulk of his pregnancy, and felt the spreading puddle of moisture there. When he pulled his hand away his fingertips came away tipped with red.

 

“Is that meant to happen?” Dick asked.

 

“No,” Bruce muttered. “No, this is… wrong.” This was not how this was meant to happen. Not how he’d planned it or envisioned it from the very start. Not how he’d thought things would turn out or how he’d written them in the three hundred and seventy three page birth plan hidden from Clark under a false bottom in the bathroom draws.

 

But for some reason he couldn’t believe it had happened either. Some part of his brain saw the blood and thought any minute now time would roll backwards and he’d be standing again with another chance to stop Dick from killing himself of Talia’s sword.

 

Another chance to stop Dick from condemning himself to a lifetime of being a killer.

 

“Ubu,” Talia said softly, her gaze bleak and pinned onto Bruce. “Kill the beta. Don’t fail me this time.”

 

The man drew his sword and started forward with deathly purpose.

 

Dick scrambled back and rolled onto his feet just as Bruce – gritting his teeth against the tug and pull on the rip inside him – pushed himself to his feet and without hesitation shoved himself between Dick and the towering alpha.

 

“Ubu!” Talia cried.

 

The man paused. Alphas were inevitably above omegas in the League of Assassin hierarchy but Bruce was something special. Not only was he high level and a warrior in his own right but he had been chosen to bear the blood of the demon. Harming him was a crime second only to harming blood members of the al Ghul family.

 

Bruce seized on the hesitation and in a quick move disarmed the man.

 

“Dick!” He threw the blade into the air. A move that tore more at the wound inside him.

 

The acrobat caught it. “Bruce! You need to…”

 

“Go!” He ordered between gritted teeth. “Now!”

 

The man’s eyes flicked between Bruce and Ubu until, with a pained sound, he obeyed. Seconds later Talia was pushing Bruce back against the wall, making room for Ubu, and snarling at him with black eyes.

 

“Here I was thinking you were being so _good_ ,” she snarled. “Such a _good_ boy, I thought. Not perfect. Oh no. But taking orders. Taking punishment.” She shoved him against the wall. The impact ripped at the wound inside with a surge of crippling pain.

 

“What a _good_ boy,” she sneered as he choked out a strangled snarl of pain. “I thought I wouldn’t have to hurt you too much before you were where you were always meant to be. Happy at my side. Beautiful. Deadly. A father to kings but ready to serve your queen. I must tell you the idea was…” her lips twisted into a cruel smile. Her father’s smile. “… _boring_. No, I think this will be more fun. I shall enjoy breaking you, Beloved.”

 

“Is that what Ra’s did to you?” Bruce hissed back, arms clutching his middle. “Broke you? Tamed you? Is that where your spirit went? Your spark? Your soul?”

 

A laugh. “You think I needed to be tamed? No, Beloved.”

 

Shaking on his feet. “Tamed. Taught. Whatever you call it. The woman I loved is dead.”

 

Her face changed. From victorious and vindictive to curiously blank. “Love… That is not the first time you’ve used that word. How can you pretend to have loved me when you left me?”

 

A raw piece of emotion he didn’t know he still had locked up inside him broke free. With it came a word he had promised himself he would never use. A word he’d told himself he didn’t need. A word he’d put it aside with everything else when he’d walked out of her life.

 

Low. Wretched. “You raped me.”

 

“Western platitudes,” she muttered darkly. “Do you truly wish to maintain the fiction that you would have denied me if you hadn’t been intoxicated?” She snorted. “Don’t sully yourself by playing the victim. You’re better than that.”

 

Blood was sliding down his thighs. Hot, sticky, and sickening. “You know what happened.”

 

“Do I? And I suppose this is a truth that, by happenstance you would have me believe, only occurred to you ten years after the event? At the suggestion of your new mate? He who wishes to delegitimise what we shared so he can insist upon my villainy and his heroism.”

 

Through his teeth. “You happily play the part of villain.”

 

“In your ridiculous game of capes and costumes it is always better to fashion oneself as the antagonist. You see, an antagonist acts. A protagonist reacts.”

 

“When you take away my ability to react that—”

 

Angry. “Are you truly going to stand there and tell me it was non-consensual?”

 

“Are you going to stand there and tell me that it was?! You took away my power. You took away my choice. You used me! You _know_ you used me! You _know_!” The force of the shout robbed him of the last shred of energy he held and wrenched at the tight knot of agony inside him.

 

He slumped back against the wall and began to slide down it.

 

Talia regarded him coolly. Her face all sharp angles and thin lines. “If I admit that, will you admit the woman you loved and I aren’t so different after all?”

 

He looked up at her. At the shape of her face and the curve of her lip. He thought of the first time he’d seen that face on the other side of Ra’s al Ghul’s dinner table watching him unabashed want. So beautiful… she’d been so _so_ beautiful… and fearless. The only person in the world not shy to scoff at the great Ra’s al Ghul or practise climbing on the old castle battlements.

 

“Yes,” he admitted. “Yes.” _I loved you. I loved you. I loved you. I loved you._ “Yes.”

 

Her lips puckered. “You are a fool. A da—”

 

The lights stuttered and dimmed. It was all the warning they had before the wall beyond them exploded with a shower of ripped concrete, shredded rock, and soil.

 

Bruce brought up an arm to shield his face from the spray of debris. When he brought it down Batman was standing before him and Talia had disappeared.

 

Before he could figure out where she’d gone, what just happened, or how his own superhero persona had come to be standing before him, Batman was on his knees and touching him; a fast frantic search for any major injuries.

 

“Bruce!” The voice was digitised belonged to that of the black clad vigilante but the inflection was all Clark. “Bruce? Are you okay?”

 

“Suit eighteen,” he finally recognised what he was looking at. Clark must have put it on as a protection against kryptonite and simple magic radiation. Clunky, heavy, but wonderfully perfectly suited to shielding Clark at this moment. “I always hated suit eighteen.”

 

“Dick?” Jason’s voice penetrated the gloom and for the first time Bruce noticed the young alpha hunched and twitching with nervous battle lust in the body of the corridor.

 

“Left,” he told him. “Go.”

 

Jason didn’t hesitate. He bolted down the corridor and disappeared into the dark a moment later.

 

The sight pulled taunt a new knot of fear in his gut. Would Jason find Dick? Would they be okay? Could they subdue Ubu? They were both highly skilled but so was Ubu and neither of them were in a good fighting headspace right now. What happened if they ran into other assassins or man-bats? What if…?

 

“Oh God…” Clark was looking down at the blood between Bruce’s legs. “Jesus I… I got to get you out of here.” He pulled Bruce forward, the sudden movement dragging an involuntary tortured sound from Bruce’s throat. Clark recoiled like he’d been stung. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you? What can I do? How can I…?”

 

“The boys,” he said stiffly. “Where are the boys?”

 

“You’re bleeding, Bruce! I’ll come back for them. Right now I need to get you out of here.” Clark’s arms were worming back around him. Gently this time. Almost unbearably so. “Tell me if it hurts, okay? Please tell m—”

 

A flash of gold. “Clark!”

 

Talia melted out of the shadows and plunged a glittering dagger into Clark’s back. It sliced through the armour and into the Kryptonian like they were both little more than air. A single brutal moment Bruce felt burn onto his retinas. Something he knew he would see no matter how tight he closed his eyes. Joe Chill pointing a gun as pearls rained down around him, a circus boy teetering on the verge of jumping after his falling parents, Jason lying dead and broken under a mangled pile of twisted steel… and his mate arching as an impossible knife buried itself in his body.

 

Clark cried out and knocked the woman off him with the back of his arm. The dagger stayed lodged between his ribs as she flew back and smashed into the far wall; limbs snapping and clawing for a hold on the roughly hewn rock.

 

“Clark,” he rasped, pulling himself forward and – without hesitation – grabbing the hilt of the blade imbedded in his mate.

 

Bruce had no magical talent and had frustrated Zatanna to not end in the weeks he insisted she try to teach him the craft. In the end she’d thrown up her hands in defeat. “I don’t know what it is about you Bruce. You have every advantage. You’ve mastered meditation, you can memorize any incarnation, and you’re an omega – don’t look at me like that, you know there’s a reason two thirds of magicians have hips – but I’ve met rocks with more magical potential than you.” Since then he’d given up any pursuit of the mystic arts. But even Zatanna’s rock would have felt the throb of magic radiating out from that blade.

 

He pulled it free, trusting the man’s powers to mend the otherwise fatal wound, and hurled it at Talia. He didn’t know what he intended to happen when he threw that blade. He didn’t know if it was a distraction, a disarming technique, or a murder attempt.

 

Talia yelled in pain as it sunk into her hand, severing tendons, and sending a second dagger spinning out of her fingers to clatter useless on the cave floor.

 

Once the magic was on the outside of the armour Clark straightened and turned to face his attacker.

 

“Why?” He asked. Thin. Fragile. “Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting us?”

 

Harsh. Angry. “You stole my mate!”

 

“I need to get him out of here. He’s hurt.”

 

“Your _offspring_ is hurt, alien. That is not my concern. In fact, it was my intension. He himself has saved me the bother.”

 

“No no no,” Bruce was shaking his head before he realised what he was doing. “No. She’s fine. She’s okay. It’s… me. Yes. It’s my blood. See? I hurt myself. That’s why it hurts. It’s not her. She’s fine.” The girl was chillingly still inside him. _You’re fine, pup. You’re fine._ “She’s fine.”

 

“If you want a fight, I’ll give you one,” Clark told Talia. “Just let me get him out of here. _Please_.”

 

“No! I will not let you take him again!” She barked an order in Arabic and a handful of assassins shot out of the darkness. All bound head to foot in the al Ghul’s signature light leather armour and wielding daggers identical to the one Talia held in her hand.

 

The knife wound had weakened Clark. The blade’s magic was potent, deadly, and had been delivered in no uncertain terms straight into the man’s heart. But he was still Superman, the abrasion was already closed, and unless Talia or her goons managed to cut through his armour a second time he wasn’t going to be weakened by it or the amulet swinging from her belt.

 

But she had already killed him once before.

 

“Stop!” Bruce pushed himself to his feet as the two collided. “Don’t!”

 

Clark drove Talia into the far wall in a blatant exhibition of power even as she sliced his shoulder with the edge of the blade. The other assassins leapt into the fray, taking advantage of Clark’s occupied arms to cut through the plates of armour like they were nothing more than cardboard. Legs. Arms. Back.

 

“No!”

 

He was there. He didn’t remember moving. Didn’t remember the decision to move. But he was there pushing the assassins off the man he loved with brutal ferocity, breaking wrists and ribs with every grab and punch, and yanking the blades out of Clark before they could sap anymore of his mate’s power. Driven forward through the tight mess of agony in his gut to protect what could be the last thing he had left.

 

_It’s okay, pup. It’s okay. I’m sorry. It’s okay._

 

A lie. The most necessary lie he had ever told.

 

“Beloved!” Talia grabbed him by the neck, nails sinking into his flesh, and hauled him back. Her right hand was a gory mess, left arm broken, and face mangled and bloody below her nose. “This is what you want?! This is your answer?! We could have made a better world together!”

 

He tried to drive her into the wall but she twisted under his arm and instead pushed him into the rock. _“Ah!”_

 

“Very well, _Beloved_.” A feral hiss. “You have made your choice… and I have made mine.”

 

She reached around his body, knife protruding from the fist of her hand, and moved to cut his throat.

 

He felt the ghostly touch of metal. A line on his jugular.

 

“Bruce!”

 

Before she could drag it across his throat he grabbed her ruined hand in his and squeezed. One last surge of instinct. The knife toppled from her grasp, flashed eerily in the dim light, and without losing momentum sliced through the rocky structure of the wall.

 

He knew what would happen the moment he saw that blade carving through the cement and stone like fog. Clark had already weakened the structure of the underground base when he broke in and the sheer force of the fight hadn’t done anything to help that situation. It wasn’t designed to withstand one wall being compromised… let alone two.

 

Talia looked strangely irritated as the roof began to collapse. Like a Queen being told something had gone wrong while sitting in a distant throne room not a leader standing on the battlefield as her warriors died – crushed by falling stones – around her.

 

“Tali—”

 

A cluster of rocks smashed down between them, bringing with it a shower of soil and sand. A single thunderous moment like a full stop at the end of a book.

 

And then she was gone.

 

“Bruce!” He felt rather than heard Clark’s voice. “Bruce!” The man’s arms wrapped around him. “Hold on, okay? Hold on.”

 

The world vanished into a rush of air… hard, fast, sickening… then grass.

 

Bruce sunk his fingers into the ice tipped green stems. Short, square topped, and lush enough to be cared for almost daily. A rich man’s grass. He and rolled onto his side. Above him the familiar spires of Wayne Manor stood like the shoulders of an old friend.

 

He was on his front lawn.

 

He wasn’t the only one.

 

On the opposite side of the driveway, just far enough away to not immediately notice their presence, was a squadron of police cars each topped with flashing red blue lights.

 

Batman appeared beside him with a blur of black fabric and gently eased two coughing men down onto the green beside him. Dick had lost his mask at some point in the collapse leaving the shape of it clearly imprinted on his face with cement powder. Jason was drenched in blood and sagged defeated from Clark’s embrace to thud gracelessly to the ground. Both battered and bruised but alive. So beautifully alive.

 

Bruce hugged his middle – hugged the swell of pain there – as his arms started to shake.

 

“C-Clark?”

 

The man stood over them, visually staggering, as he pulled the last few daggers out of his ribs. “I…I don’t think I can… I almost fell carrying Dick and... I can’t…” He sunk down beside Bruce and put a black gloved hand on his stomach. “I can’t…”

 

Bruce wasn’t sure how long they lay there, prone and defeated on the grass, before the the police finally spotted them and approached. As always Commissioner Gordon lead the charge, striding out ahead of the other officers and redoubling his speed again when he got close enough to recognise not only Batman but the rest of them as well.

 

Bruce saw him take in the scene. Batman hunched, covered in wounds, and panting over Bruce; Dick half dressed in unmistakable armour with the shape of a mask still outlined on his face; and Jason… with a spark of raw disbelief Bruce saw Jim recognise Jason. The boy that died grown up and wearing Batman’s belt low on his hips.

 

Bruce saw him, in a split second, take it all in… and then decide not to see it.

 

“You!” He barked at the first officer to catch up with him. “Get a blanket for this man. You!” He rounded on the second. “Call an ambulance. Make sure birthing personal are on board. And you.” He stepped in front of the third. “Go back to the car.”

 

The third officer blinked up at her commander in chief in shock. “S-sir?”

 

“You heard me.”

 

She glanced over his shoulder at the large obvious frame of Batman before – with a nervous nod – turning and jogging back up the hill.

 

“You won’t be able to go in the ambulance, Batman,” Jim spoke softly. “Send one of the others. I’ll… I’ll take whoever you don’t send back to your pack so they can tell them what’s happened.”

 

Bruce didn’t know what it was about that sentence. Perhaps it was the heavy solemn sound of Jim’s voice. Perhaps it was the suggestion at separating himself from Clark. Perhaps it was something petty and stupid like the way Jim talked over him to the alpha at his side. Perhaps it was all of those things. Perhaps none of them.

 

But those words were what finally broke him.

 

He rolled into Clark’s embrace, buried his face in the man’s quaking shoulders, and cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I know I don't usually use this note box very often but I have a bit to say about this chapter so bear with me.
> 
> Firstly, that's it. That's our climax. I really hope you liked it and that it all made sense. I certainly had one crazy time of it especially when it came to tackling my fears about writing action. But, while that was our climax, you will notice the story is not yet over. We're going to be back to emotional/family drama from here on out. A period I am naming 'the aftermath'. I'm not sure how long it's going to take to iron out some of these issues but it's going to be more than a chapter, that's for sure.
> 
> Secondly, due to constraints on my end I wrote the vast majority of this today. This means it may be rough around the edges until I can go through and maybe tidy it up. For this I apologise but I couldn't bring myself to sit on it especially when I didn't know when I'd get the opportunity to do a nip and tuck. I hope you can forgive me.
> 
> Thirdly, it's my birthday today and it been one of the best gifts to be able to let go of outward stress and just dedicate myself to some good fun fanfiction while getting such lovely comments from you guys on my last chapter. Seriously, it's been a treat and I really would like to thank you all.
> 
> Finally, and on that note, I'm sorry I didn't respond to (most) of your comments last chapter. I really wanted to get this done today and so I put off responding to you in favour of crazy-writing-frenzy. I will be responding to the comments on the last chapter over the next couple of days (I'm so keen to discuss some of the things you brought up!) as well as any comments I receive on this chapter.
> 
> Thanks so much guys! I've had A LOT of fun getting here and I can only hope you have too. I know it's heavy stuff at this point but I am aiming for a happier ending than this.


	32. Chapter 32

Three hundred and seventy three militaristically margined A4 pages sat before him. Each contained approximately four paragraphs, was numbered at both the top and the bottom, and was double sided. A book. Bruce had written a book about how he wanted to birth their daughter.

 

_Of course. Of course you did you strange perfect man._

 

Clark flipped through it again.

 

Every line was direct and to the point, every section numbered and organised, and every key point tagged with the same bright red sticky notes used on the Batman Inc. contract. It was all so… Bruce. From the firm font to the bold black binding. He could see the man on every page, could feel him in the font, and hear his voice in his head when he read the text. His words, his inflections, and his obvious and unconditional love for the being he was bearing.

 

 _She will be monitored continuously with an external electronic Okamura Industries labour monitor,_ Clark read, _model O224 or newer. If one is not available the list of preferences for other models can be found on pg. 104._

 

_The regular method of foetal scalp lactate may be impossible given her sire. Low dose kryptonite tipped needles will be provided if the method of testing becomes a necessity but the use of them will be reserved for a case of extreme need as deemed by the bearer._

 

_Cell and DNA samples shall be collected immediately and transferred to Timothy Drake-Wayne to be tested with solar radiation. This will determine the effects sunlight will have on her skin and cells. DNA collection will be done orally and no cells will be kept by medical institutions or personal._

 

He was ‘a poet that accidentally stumbled into journalism’ according to the panel of reviewers that almost gave a Pulitzer seven years ago… but he could never hope to write anything as beautiful as Bruce’s birth plan.

 

Practical. Logistical. But filled with an almost shy kind of love.

 

“Why did you hide this from me?”

 

Bruce looked at him and then away. “I didn’t.” Unbearably soft. “It has been in the top draw in our bathroom for three months.”

 

“The top draw on the _left_. That’s where you keep your razors. You know I shave with my heat vision.”

 

He didn’t look back at him.

 

“Bruce?”

 

“It doesn’t matter now.”

 

“Bruce it…”

 

The omega reached out, plucked the document from Clark’s hands, and put it across his knees. Out of reach and closed. “It doesn’t matter now.”

 

Clark’s heart clenched.

 

Bruce’s birth plan was beautiful… but it was also the blueprint for a birth that would never happen.

 

He’d wanted to have a home birth, a water one. He’d wanted to have only medical people who were aware of superheroes so Clark could be there unambiguously and the baby’s needs could be discussed openly. He’d wanted the media to be kept in the dark for at least a week, his pack to be in the other room, and to step ladder through pain medication.

 

He had none of it.

 

This wasn’t Bruce’s beautiful, every step mapped out, family birth.

 

This was something terrifying, isolating, and uncontrolled.

 

This wasn’t a mountain he needed to climb.

 

This was standing on the edge of the cliff trying not to fall.

 

“How do you feel?”

 

“Numb,” Bruce answered.

 

“At least that’s better than…”

 

“I preferred the pain.”

 

Clark frowned. “Why?”

 

“I had some control. I could feel what was going on. I could…” he fingered the edge of his obsolete birth plan. “What if she’s kicking right now and I don’t know? I’ve never not known. I’ve never…”

 

“She’s sleeping,” Clark tried to comfort him.

 

Bruce’s gaze snapped to him. “Sleeping? Is she getting oxygen? Is sh—”

 

“She’s still getting oxygen,” Clark promised.

 

“But what if it’s not enough? What if…”

 

“She’s fine. She’s sucking her thumb.”

 

The girl huddled within the bloody skin of Bruce’s uterus, single patch of hair tangled into a half curl over her brow, and thumb pressed firmly into her mouth. At her feet the placenta – almost completely ripped off the wall of the womb – was heroically still supplying her with what she needed despite its brutalised state. Barely. It wouldn’t last long and neither would this pregnancy. The pressure of the bleed had broken Bruce’s already fragile waters and the physical abuse had taken its toll. Around the now softly bleeding wound where his placenta had torn away Bruce was badly bruised both inside and out.

 

The girl wasn’t.

 

Despite everything there wasn’t a mark on her.

 

Clark didn’t know if it was luck or if it was superpowers somehow manifesting without direct sunlight.

 

Whatever the cause he was grateful.

 

When Clark had found Bruce in Talia’s bunker the blood had been running out of him like a river. He couldn’t tell – within the panic, fear, and desperation – who exactly was bleeding and from where. He didn’t know if it was his daughter or his mate. He didn’t care. All he’d wanted to do was get them both out of there alive. Nothing else mattered. Not their fight. Not Talia. Nothing.

 

If the woman hadn’t stood between him and saving his family he would have let her go without a backwards glance. It was her insistence to end things that had led to the nightmare that followed.

 

His mind flashed through everything that had happened.

 

It was the odd details that were the most vivid.

 

Bruce’s teeth as he cried out in pain. Jason’s dead defeated weight beside Dick’s frantic cling as he flew them through the collapse. Talia’s heartbeat, slow and steady, even as she screamed and drew a knife across Bruce’s throat.

 

_Please. I wouldn’t survive that. Please. Please no. Please…_

 

Clark studied the faint red line running along his mate’s jugular. Not deep enough to cut but deep enough his skin remembered it.

 

It was not the only mark she’d left on him.

 

Bruce had scratch marks on the left of his jaw, massive bruises along the right half of his body, and was covered in small strategically placed nicks and cuts. Every time Clark looked at him he found more. Between his fingers, under his nails, behind his ears. More than he thought even Bruce remembered receiving. At first he’d thought them the result of fighting but then he’d found four in a neat line on Bruce’s left forearm. Like a tally about to be crossed. A small sadistic signature.

 

He didn’t think he had enough mental energy left to hate Talia… but he did. Her almost certain death didn’t purge it from his system it just left it sitting – a stagnant festering lump – inside him.

 

But what was worse than the hatred was the taunt cord of confusion running through it. _Why?_ Why had she done it? Talia had hurt Bruce, Damian, Dick, Tim, and so many others. She’d killed him. She’d killed her own son. She’d tried to kill their daughter. For what? Just to get Bruce? No. She wasn’t stupid. She must have known there was no way he was going to run away with her after what she did.

 

So why?

 

He had a feeling he would never know the answer to that question.

 

“I think I’m having a contraction.”

 

Bruce was looking at the monitor at his side and the read out marching across the narrow screen. The line, once lazily zigzagging from side to side, was now frantically scribbling out a thick clot of data.

 

“Do you feel anything?”

 

“No.” There was a dark regret in his eyes. “Not really.”

 

“You were in a lot of pain, Bruce,” Clark tried to comfort him. “More so than most births. No one’s going to blame you for taking an epidural.”

 

“It’s not more so than most births,” Bruce said. “And I can handle pain. I… I gave away the last piece of control I had. I’m not even a participant in her birth. I’m just… here.”

 

“You bore her for nine months.”

 

“No I didn’t.”

 

“No one can say you’re not part of this.”

 

“I can. I should have…” Bruce closed his eyes. “Is the pack coming?”

 

Clark felt useless as he slowly shook his head. Once the researchers at Wayne Medical realised Heretic’s body was a perfect donner for Damian they moved quickly. The tissue had been revitalised and kept alive with a whole host of state of the art machines but it had still lain dead in the police station for a long time before they’d gotten their hands on it. If Damian was going to get a piece of the lung he had to get it immediately and he needed to be monitored to see if it would take. Most of the pack were staying at Wayne Enterprises until the boy was stable enough to move. It was a decision Bruce’s practical mind couldn’t fault. They were safer there and Bruce was safer if his location wasn’t drawn attention too.

 

But that was not the first time Bruce had asked that question.

 

The door opened.

 

Leslie carried herself with a quiet dignity she hadn’t before. It was as if she knew everything they’d just been through – perhaps she read it on the marks on Bruce’s body and the blood on the bedsheets – and knew now was not the time to be anything but professional.

 

“How are you feeling, Bruce?”

 

“What are you going to do?” He cut straight to the meat.

 

“That’s up to you,” she came to a stop at the foot of the bed. “As you know a placental abruption is a very serious issue. You’re very lucky your baby was unharmed and that you yourself have stopped bleeding. However, the situation is very unstable. If something goes wrong you could start seriously bleeding again or your baby could be cut off from her oxygen supply.” She picked up the chart, remembered where she was, and put it back on the end of his bed unread. “All this you know.”

 

“What are you going to do?” Bruce asked again.

 

Leslie looked uncomfortable. “I have a midwife with me from Wales. I’ve known her for years and as a midwife she is far more specialized and experienced in childbirth than I am. I would like for you to see her but, considering what happened last time, I wouldn’t blame you if you would rather not.”

 

“It’s a natural birth then?”

 

“I personally would rather it not be.”

 

“You want to try another C-section?” Clark heard himself rasp. “With your surgery team?”

 

Leslie swallowed. “I have changed almost everyone on staff. In half an hour we’ll be able to do the surgery.”

 

“He was almost cut open without any pain relief last time! You want to do that again?!”

 

Bruce looked at him and there was none of the accusation in his eyes Clark expected. No ‘you’re the one that signed off on it’. No ‘you weren’t watching what they were doing.’ No ‘if you’d respected me enough to listen to me.’ Instead all he said was, “You don’t want to do a caesarean anymore?” No judgement. No accusation. Just a question in need of an answer.

 

It was more than Clark deserved.

 

Much more.

 

It was him. He was the one that put Bruce in the surgery against his wishes, took him without telling the family back to an unguarded house, and left him alone so Talia could capture and abuse him. All the pain, all the horror, was his fault. Just because he blamed Bruce for a surge of instinct his doubt compelled him to listen to.

 

“Whatever you think is best,” Clark told him. “We’ll do whatever you want.”

 

An unhappy twitch in his lips. So slight Clark wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t spent the last few years utterly in love with that face. “I’m asking you.”

 

“Bruce,” he reached out and took the man’s hand. “You don’t need to do that. You don’t need to substantiate my power. You don’t have to listen to me just because of what happened last time with my instincts. That’s not your fault. That’s not your job. I’m not so weak that I need my omega to bow to me. It was my fault and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I shouldn’t have…”

 

Bruce pulled his hand from Clark’s. His look unreadable. “I was asking your opinion.”

 

“No, Bruce. You don’t need to do that. Whatever you think is best, okay? I just…”

 

The omega turned away from him with a barely detectable grimace and looked at Leslie. “Send in the midwife.”

 

Leslie nodded, looked at Clark over her glasses, and left.

 

“Go outside and sit in the sun,” Bruce said the moment she was out the door. “You’re still too weak.”

 

“I’m fine, Bruce. I’m…”

 

“You’ve got a bruise on your knuckle and I know you didn’t fly here.” A long look. “Your hair is too forward for that.”

 

“Bruce I don’t…”

 

“Go find Jason. He needs someone to talk to right now.”

 

It was a dismissal. Plain and brutal.

 

Clark tried to tell himself it was just because they needed to maintain Clark’s secret identity. He’d been seen with Bruce too often already and the media was starting to whisper about the two strange alphas lurking around the Wayne family. The current assumption was they were Batman and Robin which brought even more attention onto their shoulders. If someone took a good look – or worse, a photo – of either him or Kon he had no doubt connections would be made.

 

He wasn’t sure he cared anymore.

 

How could he worry about Superman’s secret identity when his mate was bleeding in a hospital bed? If people already believed Bruce was with Batman would it be so different to say he’s with Superman? Would anyone really realise he was Clark Kent just from his civilian clothes?

 

In the back of his mind he knew the answers to all those questions. Knew he needed to keep his family safe in the future and not just the moment. Knew Bruce’s identity as Batman would likely be deduced if people learnt he was mated to Superman. Knew it was better safe than sorry… and he knew Bruce hadn’t asked him to leave to protect Superman’s identity.

_Stupid! He was just asking for an opinion! For a discussion! For support! And you… stupid!_

 

He raked his fingers through his hair as he walked out of the estranged arm of Gotham General – a children’s ward hopefully far away from where any lingering assassins would be lurking – and into the park this part of the hospital wrapped around. The air was crisp and icy cold but the sun was out and shining down for the first time in days.

 

He turned his face up, gazed freely at Sol, and felt the prickle of reenergising light spread from the exposed skin on is face down through the rest of his body. It would take a lot more sunlight and a lot more time before he was back to normal but it was soothing to be back in the warm loving light of the sun.

 

“You left him again.”

 

Jason sat on a park bench, elbows resting on his knees, and hands in his hair. His face was down and voice defeated.

 

“He told me to go,” Clark told him.

 

The young alpha didn’t look up. Didn’t say anything.

 

Jason had ridden with Bruce on the way to the hospital, guarded him, and then walked out without a backwards glance when Clark arrived.

 

“Hey…” Clark approached. “Are you okay?”

 

“No. How the fuck could I be okay? How the fuck are you okay? How the...” His body shook with something that looked dangerously like a barely swallowed sob. “F-fucking… It’s so fucking...”

 

Clark sat down on the park bench beside him. Knew better than to reach out and attempt to sling an arm over his shoulder. Knew better than to offer any kind of physical comfort. “It’s going to be okay,” he said instead. “It’s all over now. It’s okay.”

 

“Okay?” Jason lifted his head just enough to flash his teeth. “Since when was over okay? Over isn’t okay. Some fucker stabs me, you tell me it’s all over, but I’m still bleeding out on the fucking floor over here. How is that okay?”

 

Clark didn’t know what to say to that.

 

“It’s all over,” Jason continued, voice a husky rasp. “It’s fucking done. But it’s not okay. It still _hurts_.”

 

Clark glanced through the hospital walls at Bruce. The man was on his side with a pillow between his knees as the midwife examined him. Her voice was light, friendly, and filled the room. Melodic and chatty. “…has moved right into position – no more bathroom breaks for you – and – oh my – you’re eight and a half centimetres dilated! I was not expecting that. You might be doing this the old fashioned way after all. Wouldn’t that be good?”

 

Bruce grunted when appropriate but didn’t otherwise make a sound. Instead he stared hopelessly at a random patch of wall. He was in pain. More pain than Clark knew or could understand. And none of that pain was physical.

 

Talia had meant something to Bruce. He didn’t know what. He couldn’t even guess at what. But she’d wounded him… and someone had wounded Jason too. He wouldn’t have used the metaphor he did if it was just Leviathan’s attack that had brought him out here.

 

“Was it Talia?”

 

“What?”

 

“Did Talia hurt you?”

 

“I didn’t even see Talia!”

 

“But did she…?”

 

Jason raked his fingers through his hair and sat up straight. “She fucked me over in the past. A whole bunch of people have fucked me over in the past. Bruce has fucked me over in the past. It doesn’t matter.”

 

Clark studied him. “So who is it that’s got you upset?”

 

Jason’s whole body stiffened and eyes snapped to him; bleak, black, angry. “Who says someone’s got me upset?”

 

“I was just…”

 

“What the hell is this?” He hissed. “Are you trying to be the big daddy alpha now? Trying to pat me on the shoulder and make everything better? Well, fuck you. I don’t need your help. I don’t need you goddamned pity.”

 

Clark waited.

 

“I ain’t a bitch! I don’t need to be taken care of. I don’t need to be wrapped in fucking blankets. I don’t need nothing! You want to take care of someone? Go look after you fucking mate. I don’t care if he tells you to fuck off. I don’t care. You’re the alpha. You’re his partner. You’re a part of it. You should get a say. You should...”

 

“Dick,” Clark realised. “Did he break up with you?”

 

Jason looked stricken. “I… no! Fuck you! You don’t know nothing! He’s just messed up right now. Just got to think about shit. That’s it. That’s _it!_ I… he’s…” A flash of horror. A flash of pain. A flash of regret. Then nothing.

 

Clark looked “Jason?”

 

The pause was a long one. A very long one. Then… “What’s wrong with us?”

 

“Nothing,” Clark said quickly. “Nothing it’s…”

 

Softly. “We always come back here. We always fuck up. You and Bruce have been together for years, you fight, but it’s okay. Tim and the not-clone are always okay. But we’re…” his fingers clenched around his thumbs. Tight. Tighter. So tight Clark was worried he would break them. “Is it because we’re kind of brothers? It is because our castes are wrong?”

 

“No,” Clark said quickly. “I don’t think you two are brothers. You don’t feel like brothers. And there is nothing wrong with loving who you love. Alpha, beta, or omega. Man or woman. It’s all…”

 

“You’re giving me the gay speech. The one they give on TV all the time now.”

 

“Hey,” he pushed a smile. “It’s a good speech. And it’s true you know.”

 

“Alpha beta ain’t gay,” Jason said. “It’s just…”

 

“A little queer?”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

Clark smiled stiffly and looked away. It had taken him a little while to get used to Jason. The alpha had a barbed tongue on him and didn’t seem to care who it hurt. But he wasn’t as tough as he pretended to be either. Like just then… his Narrow’s accent was thick. That accent always came back strong whenever he was upset. Just like the first night Clark had come to Wayne Manor. Jason had seemed so boyish that night, sitting on the grass with red rimmed eyes and hands shoved so deep in his pockets it was a miracle he didn’t rip through the jacket.

 

He’d _felt_ like a humiliated teenager then.

 

Now he felt like a man holding his heart in his hands.

 

“Do you love Dick?” Clark asked.

 

A dull rasp. “Yes.”

 

“Do you think he loves you?”

 

Silence.

 

“Jason?”

 

“He says he does.”

 

Clark felt his eyebrows arch. “You don’t trust him?”

 

Jason didn’t answer at first. Then… “Depends.”

 

“On what?”

 

A deep breath. “Fuck. I don’t know.” A hand through his hair. “It ain’t that. It ain’t like I think he’s with other guys or anything. Or girls. Alphas. He likes alphas. He says that all the time.”

 

Clark studied him. “Do you like betas?”

 

“No! No I…” Jason trailed off as if surprised by what he’s said.

 

Clark turned away as the weight of that answer settled around him. “You prefer omegas.”

 

Again. “No.”

 

He looked up in surprise. “Then…?”

 

“I don’t prefer anything,” Jason said. “People. They’re all ugly, you know. I mean, sometimes one smells or looks a certain way and you notice but it’s just _bits_ of you noticing and only for a little while. It’s fucked. I’m fucked. But I don’t prefer nothing. Not really…” a tortured look. “…‘cept Dick.”

 

Clark regarded him. Didn’t know what he could say. Didn’t know what he was meant to say. Couldn’t think so something to say.

 

Jason beat him to it.

 

“That’s fucked isn’t it?”

 

Quickly. “No.”

 

“Yeah it is. Like, Talia’s almost killed us, your kid is coming out, the demon spawn is in surgery, and here I am bitching about me and Dick.” A hollow look. “That’s fucked. I don’t care what you say. That’s fucked.”

 

“Maybe,” Clark conceded. “Maybe… but what are we meant to do after… that.” He thought about the icy draining touch of Talia’s knives, about the sight of Bruce slumped and leaking blood on the cement floor, and the moment on the lawn when the man rolled towards him – grass stained red where he’d been – and wept dry and ugly into his shoulder.

 

Clark had already beaten him to it. He didn’t know when he started crying but the moment Bruce leant into him he knew he had been for a while.

 

“The only thing we can do is continue. That’s the only thing we can do.”

 

“I want to continue with him,” Jason said. “I don’t know how to do it alone anymore. I don’t know how to not be in love with him.”

 

When Bruce had hugged him on the lawn – hugged him and wept – the circle of his arms had been painfully tight. He’d never been hurt by one of Bruce’s embraces before. He’d never been weak enough for it to be a possibility. But Bruce clung to him with such force he felt it through the bat-armour. Clung to him with such absent minded strength, if Clark was naked, he could have broken bones.

 

Despite it, he’d never wanted Bruce to let go. Never wanted to stop feeling the strength of that life.

 

“I know.” It was the only answer Clark had. “I know.”

 

He wasn’t sure how long he sat with Jason. Long enough to melt the bruise off his knuckles, fill up a meagre reserve of power, and be noticed by a few children in hospital pyjamas who pressed their faces curiously up against the windows and watched them. When he finally decided to go back he stood and turned to Jason.

 

“Do you want to come inside? Bruce is missing the pack. He might like it if you were there.”

 

An empty laugh. “Yeah, no. I’ll sit in the hall but, I don’t care how much he ‘likes’ it, that’s the boss’s bits. I don’t want to see that.”

 

“Fair enough,” Clark said. “So do you want to come inside and sit in the hall? It’s freezing out here.”

 

Jason thought about this for a long time before shaking his head. “In a bit I… I just want to stay out for a bit longer.”

 

Clark couldn’t find fault with that.

 

He walked back the long way, stopped to say hi to a few of the children, and held a finger to his lips when he saw one boy looking at him with assured recognition. Kids were always the first to spot Superman beneath the glasses and the hardest to be dissuaded of what they saw. They were also surprisingly good at keeping secrets and unsurprisingly rarely believed when they didn’t. This boy saw the motion and nodded sagely as – without a word – he took upon himself the sacred trust of secrecy.

 

By the time Clark arrived back at Bruce’s room the man was alone again.

 

“Hey.”

 

Bruce watched him enter. “Is Jason…?”

 

“He’s upset, but okay.” Quietly. “I think Dick’s leaving him.”

 

The man processed this.

 

Clark knew Bruce had never approved of the boys’ relationship. But he hadn’t opposed it either. If he was happy or sad hearing the news he didn’t show it.

 

“Hey, I’m sorry about…”

 

“Please don’t be sorry right now,” Bruce said softly. “I don’t want you to be sorry right now.”

 

“Okay. Okay I’m s—no. Um. Okay.” Clark had never felt more awkwardly useless in his entire life. First with Jason and now again with Bruce. “What did the midwife say?”

 

“She thinks I should give birth naturally.”

 

“And Leslie?”

 

“Surgery.”

 

“And you?”

 

Bruce shifted on the bed. “I don’t know.” He looked down. “I’m not really going to get a choice. Either something else is going to happen and we’ll need to do the surgery or she’ll drop and I’ll need to birth naturally. I don’t suppose it makes much difference in the end.”

 

“You wanted natural.” Clark said as he approached. “In the original plan it was natural.”

 

“I wanted to be able to do sit ups afterwards. Get back in shape faster.” Bruce shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

 

Clark studied him. He saw the slump of his shoulders, the listless light in his eye, and the birth plan fallen and forgotten on the bedding beside him. Grief, Clark identified what he was seeing. A distant gentle grief that bloomed from him and intermingled with the relief in knowing Leviathan was gone.

 

Clark thought about the grief he’d experienced when his father died and how Bruce had stood beside him without saying a word through the entire funeral. A wall. A pillar. A partner.

 

In that moment he finally knew what he needed to do.

 

He walked around the bed and, without a word, climbed onto it behind Bruce.

 

“Clark…” the man protested. “You’re not meant to…”

 

“The hospital’s not going to throw me out. I’m a billionaire by association.” He spooned in behind him. “And they all think I’m Batman.”

 

“I’ll bleed on you,” Bruce promised.

 

He kissed the back of his neck as he wrapped his arms around Bruce till they lay like they usually did when Clark insisted on a cuddle at home. “I think I'll survive.”


	33. Chapter 33

Tim padded through the maze of interlocking hallways at New Wayne Tower and smiled stiffly at the shocked employees he passed. His oversized pyjamas scraped against the shorn carpet, bare feet poked out from rolled hems, and IV tower rattled as he towed it along behind him. There was only one bag of fluid swinging from it now. A simple saline drip to keep him hydrated as his body regained its strength after the poisoning.

 

He didn’t need it.

 

Kon had taken it upon himself to make sure Tim was healthy, hydrated, and above all fed since coming to Wayne Enterprises. He could barely roll over without the young alpha appearing to offer a pizza sauce sandwich, Cocoa Pop chocolate milk, or a cheesy microwave pasta. The three delicacies Kon could make in the small private kitchen they’d been given in Medical Research.

 

Somehow, despite growing up in a tube and spending the first weeks of his life with Young Justice, he was as country as Clark.

 

Tim didn’t mind. There was something reassuring about the simple food, blessedly distracting about the other boy’s awkward attempts to make it, and intimately alpha-omega about his boyfriend’s insistence on feeding him… even if it stemmed more from a desire to raise Tim’s body mass index than show affection.

 

Tim sighed and turned a corner, fingers ghosting along the wall to leave an obvious scent trail for the pack mate, family friend, or boyfriend no doubt following from a distance.

 

He wished Leslie hadn’t told them about his weight issue. He could tell, once it was pointed out to him, he was thinner than he usually was prior to a heat. But, as with most things, he would have rather handled it himself than unnecessarily worry his pack. It wasn’t like he had a problem or anything. He’d just been forgetting to eat since Clark disappeared. The unspoken stress of the household and the threat of Leviathan left more than enough weight on his mind to stamp out the early indicators of hunger. And he usually got down to a weight simular to this after a heat. It’s just because it was before a heat that is was considered unhealthy.

 

It was only because of his stupid cycle that he had to be looked at with such poorly hidden concern, weighed by the doctors, and given the humiliating body image speech that he most certainly didn’t need.

 

Kon feeding him though… it was almost worth it for Kon feeding him.

 

He turned another corner, hand once more reaching out to mark the change of direction clearly on the wall, and wandered down another long corridor; enjoying the chance to move free of his hospital bed or from fear of Talia’s attacks.

 

The last few weeks had been hell.

 

It was still hell.

 

The relief that was trickling through the ranks of the pack was stained with grief stemming as much from Dick and the absent Bruce as from Damian who – upon hearing about his mother’s likely death – had reacted with an abrupt primal anger that melted into a stillness wherein he sat with shallow unfocused eyes on his hospital bed.

 

Crying was bad for his new lung, but somehow the eerie agonised silence was worse.

 

So much worse.

 

His walk was as much a respite from it as an expression of his own slowly returning health and freedom.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

Tim paused and looked up.

 

A beta in a neat suit and skirt with approached. Her lips were pulled towards an uncertain smile. “Are you lost?”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes.” Tim dusted his hair out of his face in the hopes the employee would recognise him as ‘the boss’s son’. No such luck.

 

“Where are you going? Who are you with? Should you be out alone?”

 

“I’m going to my dad’s office,” he lied.

 

“Where’s that?”

 

“On the top.”

 

“On the…” Tim watched the series of emotions that filtered behind the woman’s eyes as she recognised him. “Oh. I’m so sorry, Mr Drake.” Her hand which had been reaching out to take his hand, retreated with a snap. “I didn’t recognise you.”

 

“That’s fine,” he kept walking.

 

She was not the first beta to step up and try to rescue him. He didn’t know if it was his escaped-from-the-hospital look, the protect-the-omega instinct all betas harboured, or just a desire to get him out of the eye of potential investors. Whatever it was his caste meant betas didn’t feel shy about approaching and touching him to make sure he was okay. He was getting tired of the attention and he started absently looking for a temporary refuge in the expanse of offices. A spare room or sitting area where he could sit for a while.

 

As he walked an alpha stepped suddenly and stiffly out of his path, giving him an abundance of space and smiling without direct eye contact or showing his teeth. A proper polite alpha.

 

That too was something Tim was getting tired of.

 

Unlike betas alphas didn’t have a universal protect-the-omega instinct. Theirs tended to only kick in with pack mates and – to a stronger degree – mates. Sure, he’d never known an alpha that didn’t enjoy flexing their muscles as they 'saved' an omega but it was a far cry from the agitated need to help a beta would develop. Instead they had a hunt-and-claim-the-omega instinct. Something this alpha was going out of his way to show he was not succumbing to.

 

Tim didn’t mind being an omega. It seemed like a state not too different from any other. But sometimes it was... exhausting.

 

He wandered until he came to an empty conference room and pushed open the door. Inside he picked a tall backed leather seat, turned it towards the window, and sat gazing out across the oddly blue skies gazing down onto Gotham. The new LexCorp tower was marring the otherwise iconic skyline with the offensive flat lines of modern Metropolitan design, the train snaked between the buildings with steady dexterity, and if he squinted he could see a patch of his school oval between the buildings… where he’d first kissed Kon.

 

“You’re trending.”

 

Tim looked over his shoulder as Kon entered.

 

Of course it was Kon. Dick wouldn’t leave Damian’s side and Alfred and Ma Kent seemed trapped in each other’s orbit of late. Tim shouldn’t have expected anyone other than his own personal shadow.

 

Not that he minded.

 

“I’m what?”

 

The alpha approached and held out his phone. “Timothy Drake. You’re trending.”

 

Tim peered at the screen without taking the device. He saw pictures of himself on a news report as well as a collection of what looked like young female alphas holding up a ‘#SaveTimDrake2k15’ banner.

 

It seemed so stupid, after everything the family had been through, that some people had fixated onto him of all things to talk about. Not Batman Inc. Not Leviathan. Not even pop vigilantism, the use of private military grade weaponry, or the evolution of terrorism. Him. The little known low level omega. But they had.

 

He took the phone and started flicking through the posts. He saw pictures of him and Bruce at the first and only Wayne Foundation ball he’d went to, him getting out of the car in front of Wayne Enterprises, and what he was pretty sure was his school picture.

 

Were they even allowed to release his school picture?

 

He supposed if they weren’t it wouldn’t be long before Bruce let the lawyers off the chain like a pack of bloodthirsty hounds. Then he wouldn’t just be the rich kid at school anymore but the rich kid that sued the school for some exorbitant amount of money. Yeah, that would _totally_ go down well.

 

It wouldn’t make any difference anyway. By the looks of it there was no way the image was coming out of the public domain. He saw it stamped at the top of newspaper articles, spotted across Facebook, and one particularly eager fan had applied a sparkly lens flare, Photoshopped a heart shaped bond mark on to his neck, and scrawled the words ‘Be Mine’ and ‘Mates 4 Life’ across it in hot pink.

 

He read some of the comments and felt his cheeks redden.

 

“I guess it took a poisoning for them to realise there was another omega in the Wayne household.”

 

“I think the poisoning was more like your debutante ball," Kon said. "They knew you existed before but you were, like, a kid in all the pictures online.”

 

“Debutante ball?” Tim sent him a sideways look. “Seriously?”

 

“Yeah. They love you.”

 

“But debutante ball, dude? _Debutante ball?_ ”

 

“You know what I mean,” Kon took his phone back. “You’re a rich, unmated, omega in distress,” he said sounding surprisingly calm considering the topic of discussion. “Plus you’re like Gotham royalty and now you’re all grown up. They’d want you even if you weren’t crazy beautiful.”

 

If Tim wasn’t red before he certainly was now.

 

“W-why does Bruce get evil old businessmen after him but I get girls with rainbow bracers? Is it my hair?”

 

“You’d rather creepy old dudes?”

 

“Girls are scarier,” Tim said softly. “ _Much_ scarier.”

 

Kon smiled, pulled up his own chair, and sat down beside Tim.

 

When the alpha reached for his hand he reluctantly gave it. Usually he liked the way Kon would take charge of their sexual and – to a smaller extent – romantic relationship but just then he wasn’t in the mood for Kon’s signature cute-affection-evolves-into-make-out-and-then-sex move. But for once Kon made no move to take the contact further beyond squeezing his palm.

 

“God, I’m glad you’re okay,” he said softly. “You have no idea Tim. No idea. It was… bad. Really bad.”

 

“It’s still bad,” Tim whispered.

 

“Yeah… yeah but at least you’re here. When you were asleep I… that was worse.”

 

Quickly. “What did you do?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“You said ‘I’ and then trailed off. What did you do?”

 

“Nothing,” Kon shrugged. “I… yeah… nothing.”

 

“What was it?” Tim pushed.

 

“I was just going to say, um,” he looked aside. “I… was upset.”

 

“Upset?”

 

“Sad,” Kon tried instead.

 

“Sad?”

 

“I cried a little,” he finally admitted.

 

Tim’s eyes widened. “You cried over me?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Really?”

 

Again. “Yeah.”

 

“Like…” Tim tilted his head toward him, “a _little_ cry or…?”

 

“Shut up.”

 

“…you in Marley and Me?”

 

“I did _not_ cry in Marley and Me.”

 

“You did.” Tim insisted. “You were totally crying. Not pretty crying ei—”

 

Kon leant across the gap between their chairs and pushed his lips against Tim’s. It wasn’t the kind of kiss he was used to. It didn’t taste like alpha saliva or seek to pry his mouth open. Nor was it gentle like the kind of kisses Kon usually showered him with after sex. It was hard, fast, and heart stopping. Not sexual but somehow fierce despite it.

 

“Shut up,” Kon said as he withdrew.

 

Tim couldn’t have uttered a word just then if he’d tried.

 

“ _You_ cried in Red Dog which is, like, the _exact_ same movie.”

 

Tim felt an ugly prickle of something heavy and wretched shift inside him as he opened his mouth to protest. “No. Marley and Me is about a whiny wealthy white guy that is never happy with his perfect life. Red Dog is about a poor multiracial community coming together.”

 

“They’re funny sad dog movies,” Kon told him. “You only like Red Dog more because it’s a foreign film.”

 

“I don’t like American movies. Sue me.”

 

“You won’t _let_ yourself like American movies. Like when you dragged me to the French Film Festival to see that one movie?”

 

“ _La Belle et la B_ _ê_ _te_ _?_ _”_ Tim named it. “Come on. That was a great movie.”

“It’s Beauty and the Beast!” Kon cried. _“_ _Exactly_ _._ It’s the same movie. But you hate the American one and love the French one because you have a thing for subtitles.”

 

“The French made it first,” he told him. “It was a remake of the original French film that Disney ripped off.”

 

“You say ripped off. I say remastered.”

 

“Remastered? They just Disney-fied it! It’s all numbers and… It’s like the sugar bliss point. Just because it feels good doesn’t mean it’s good.”

 

The alpha was shaking his head. “You could probably get rid of all your girlfriend stalkers if you just publicly declared your hatred for Disney. I mean seriously, who hates Disney?”

 

“I’m sorry if I would rather support actual people than billion dollar corporations.”

 

“Says the son of a billion dollar corporation.”

 

He started to smile, began to shape the first words of a rebuttal, and then it hit him. All at once. Like a punch in the gut. He realised what the weight in his stomach was. Heavy, putrid, and gluggy like a kilo of freshly processed cement. Guilt.

 

He hiccuped though a sudden sob.

 

Kon’s teasing smile vanished to be replaced by a look of horror. “No. I’m sorry. I was just kidding. You don’t have to like Disney. I’m sure there are heaps of people who don’t like Disney… somewhere.”

 

“N-no,” Tim shook his head. “It’s not that it’s just…” he wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm. “Damian’s barely speaking, I-I think I walked in on Dick crying in the bathroom this morning, and I’ve never _ever_ seen Alfred look so tired. If Ma Kent wasn’t helping out I don’t think… And here we are kissing, joking, and talking about movies? About _Disney_?” He shook his head. “It’s not fair. Not… It’s not how it’s meant to be.”

 

Gently. “How’s it meant to be?”

 

“I-I don’t know. I…” Tim shook his head. “People have died. When people die people should be upset, they should be hurt. It’s…”

 

“It’s not your duty to cry, Tim.”

 

“Isn’t it?” He looked at Kon. “That’s my family. That’s my pack. They’re hurting. I’m…” he trailed off. “I’m just scared.”

 

“Scared?”

 

“That Talia will come back,” Tim explained. “That something will happen and Bruce or the baby will die. That things won’t be normal ever again… Damian will always be quiet and Dick always crying in the bathroom.” He stared out the window. “Selfish stuff.”

 

The alpha lifted his eyebrows. “Selfish? How’d you figure that?”

 

“It’s me. I want my life to be normal again. I want the pain to go away. I want everyone to just go back to being okay.”

 

“Oh yeah. I see it now. _So_ selfish.”

 

He sighed. “Stop it.”

 

“No,” Kon squeezed his hand. “You’re not allowed to feel guilty for smiling. Not now. _Especially_ not now. No one wants or needs that. They want you to smile. They want _you_ to be okay.”

 

Tim didn’t bother arguing with him. The alpha had that stubborn undertone in his voice that meant he’d already made up his mind and he was not going to let this one go.

 

“Everything’s going to be fine again,” Kon promised. “We’re going to hang out here until Damian’s okay to move then we’re going to go and meet our sister.”

 

“Ew. No. We’ve talked about this. Not sister. Not _our_ sister.”

 

“And then,” the alpha ploughed on, ignoring the comment. “We’re going to go home, go back to school, and watch Pirates of the Caribbean.”

 

“No.”

 

“Frozen?”

 

“No.”

 

“Aladdin?”

 

“No.”

 

“Toy Story?”

 

“No.”

 

“Not even number three?”

 

“No.”

 

“God, you’re soulless.” Kon puffed out his cheeks and slowly blew the breath away. “Fine, we’ll watch something un-American with subtitles but when I get bored I get to fuck you. Deal?”

 

Tim blinked, snorted, and laughed. He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop crying as well despite it.

 

Thank God for Kon. He was the only person who could ever make him laugh at a time like this. The only person that could somehow make everything seem normal after everything they’d been through. Thank God for him. Thank God.

 

“What?” The alpha feigned confusion at his amusement. “I’ll be quick. I’ll time it with some really fast French so you won’t even notice.”

 

“How considerate of you.”

 

He grinned. “I know right? I bet your photo filter girls wouldn’t do that. They’d probably pause the movie and give you flowers and a kiss. How rude is that?”

 

“So rude,” Tim agreed sarcastically.

 

They sat in the conference room for another half hour in easy silence. It was exactly the respite Tim needed. A breath away from the weight and pain of the pack. A place where he could cry, where he could laugh, and all of it was respectfully hidden away from those that deserved it more than him. Dick. Damian. Even Alfred.

 

When they wandered back towards Medical Research Kon once again followed from a distance, protecting from the flank rather than leading like a second or third pack alpha often did. It wasn’t too strange for Kon who was often as happy to follow as to lead but Tim had still, at the back of his mind, been expecting the alpha to take his hand an tow him back to the pack. Freed from that restrictive guide he started trying to fool the alpha; zigzagging in the hallways, touching doorways he didn’t enter, and doubling back.

 

It was a play hunt as ancient as castes and he caught a few betas smiling and rolling their eyes when they saw what he was doing.

 

He arrived back at the room Wayne Enterprises had put aside for them a minute before the alpha who grabbed Tim’s arm in a silent _‘got you’_ before disappearing to make two pizza sauce sandwiches, both for Tim. As he did Tim tried to strike up a nervous conversation with Dick and Damian. It didn’t last long.

 

Both were hurting both inside and out. The only meagre comfort they had stemming from each other, a kind of unspoken brotherhood born of their months together as Batman and Robin. Both their connection and their shared pain something Tim had no part in. He may have been poisoned but, despite everything, he hadn’t lost.

 

Something he was both grateful and guilty for.

 

When Kon came back Alfred and Martha were hot on his heels, bursting into the room with purpose.

 

“Clark just phoned,” Martha started.

 

Dick looked up.

 

Damian frowned.

 

Tim and Kon stood stunned beside each other.

 

Kon. “What is it?”

 

Alfred was the one that answered. “It’s the baby…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does this count as a cliffhanger? I'm not sure.


	34. Chapter 34

Clark had the most beautiful scent in the world. Of this, Bruce was certain.

 

Bruce lay in the dim room and breathed it in slowly through his nose. Clark smelt as he always did. Wholesome yet gentle like the windborne taste of oats roasting in the field. The defining aroma of the man complimented rather than smothered by the quiet nutty musk of his caste. A comfortingly simple story of smell vastly removed from Talia’s exotic alpha allure. One he’d once, in what must have been a moment of madness, thought boring.

 

White bread.

 

The unworldly unassuming scent he would expect from a simple blooded farm boy from Kansas.

 

But Clark wasn’t a simple blooded farm boy and when Bruce inhaled deeper he could pick up the sharp subtle high notes of something salty, strange, and almost shyly alien permitting his scent. Easy enough to ignore if one wasn’t searching for it. Impossible to miss once it was detected. Exotic to an unfathomable extreme.

 

He sucked in another deep breath and let the interwoven flavours of his mate – both the definable and the extra-terrestrial – wash over him. Calming beside the taunt stringed aggression of his own extreme high level scent and the putrid odour of blood.

 

“I told you I’d bleed on you,” he whispered.

 

The man didn’t answer.

 

Bruce wasn’t surprised. He didn’t need to roll over to know Clark was asleep. Spooned in tight behind him and hugging Bruce to his chest, but breathing deep and slow. The position was uncomfortable and his lower back ached – an acute pressure fluttering on the fraught edge of pain – but he cherished Clark’s closeness too much to wake the man and tell him to move. The heat, weight, and smell of the man the keenest comfort he could find and the only thing that eased the dull bitter sorrow that crept like poison from the back of his mind.

 

The wretched resurfaced knowing of how little Talia had cared about him, and how much she was willing to destroy in an effort to prove it. She’d wounded his pack in a way that might never heal, she’d hurt his mate in more ways than he knew, and now – in one final cruelty – she’d somehow, despite everything she’d done, left him grieving in the wake of her death.

 

A poisonous feeling mixing in with the dry fear of the birth to come and the anxious unhappiness at being so far from his pack and territory in a time of stress.

 

How he could find the emotional energy to mourn Talia he didn’t know. Even if her actions these last weeks weren’t enough to establish a hatred what she had done in the past should be. She’d let him fall in love with her, she’d tried to make him kill for her, and when that failed she raped him.

 

He grimaced as the memory, aligned with its new wretched definition, danced once more behind Bruce’s eyelids.

 

The cool taste of the red wine – mulled but not spicy with an oddly bitter aftertaste – as he tipped it into his mouth. The irritating hypersensitivity of his skin as it chaffed on the weave and seams of his clothes. The tight need – so similar and yet so jarringly different from a heat – throbbing between his legs. All things he’d put aside years ago… all things bubbling back into the frontal lobes of his brain.

 

“So,” Talia’s voice had been bitter despite the soft caress of her hand against his cheek. “A criminal peasant is more important to you than I am.”

 

“I won’t kill,” he’d mumbled through a clumsy growl. “I won’t.”

 

“Not even for me, it would seem.”

 

“No,” he confirmed. “Not even for you.”

 

Talia’s fingers had twisted into claws against his skin but when she spoke her voice was soft and light. “Another drink, Beloved?”

 

For a brief moment after he’d consumed the second glass he’d suspected. The strange bitter aftertaste, the dizzy arousal thumbing through him, the fog creeping in at the edges of his vision…

 

He’d opened his mouth to protest but found Talia’s lips against his. And he’d come to the tower for this reason hadn’t he? He’d come here thinking to perhaps steal Talia away with him, extract an apology from her, or maybe just spend one last night together… Perhaps she didn’t need to drug him to push him back onto her mattress and straddle him that night. Was it rape if the likelihood was he would have consented anyway? Was it rape if the memory of it wasn’t violent or abusive? Was it rape if he didn’t regret it?

 

How could he regret it? It had kept him away from Talia. It had sharpened his resolve to focus himself on Batman. It had given him Damian.

 

No. It was not violent. He didn’t regret it. But perhaps he could finally allow himself to consider it cruel despite that. He’d loved Talia. But she couldn’t have ever loved him. If she loved him she wouldn’t have drugged him, stolen his sperm, or dismissed him so easily after he refused to kill. If she loved him she would have listened to what he had to say that night; even if she didn’t agree with it, even if she didn’t bend to his wishes, she would have listened.

 

That was what truly hurt. Not the drugging. Not even the confusing sexual acts that followed. It was learning that, despite calling him ‘Beloved’, she did not care what he thought or how he felt. Neither in terms of mortality nor his body.

 

The door opened.

 

Bruce flinched away from the sudden splash of light and fought back the desire to growl.

 

Standing framed in the doorway was Leslie’s welsh midwife. Hair bundled into a messy bun and uniform pocket filled with a wild assortment of pens. She blinked owlishly as she spotted the alpha with him, looked away, and peeked back. “Is that…?”

 

“No.”

 

Incredulously. “ _Batman_ wears glasses?”

 

“Get out.” He spoke the words soft but low. “I don’t need you.”

 

The midwife hesitated. Finally, “Dr Thompkins has almost got her surgery ready. I thought you would want to know, considering I have a paper back there that says you rejected the last one.” She stayed hovering in the doorway. “I would also like to do one last exam to see if you’re fully dilated or not.”

 

“Later,” Bruce told her.

 

“Later?” She pressed.

 

“Ten minutes,” he muttered.

 

“Ten minutes,” she agreed softly. “That’ll be fine. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

 

The door closed again leaving the room dim and safe. Like a nest. He wished he was in his nest. He was itching to be in his nest. The ultimate safe place, an intimate place shared only with Clark.

 

He hugged the man’s arms around him tighter and brought the man’s wrist to his nose to suck in another deep breath. Nutty, warm, alien. Simple, strong, safe. Clark. Lying beside him, crowded into him by the narrow confines of the bed, and breathing in Bruce’s scent from the back of his neck. Sleeping together for the first time in what felt like months.

 

He thought about all the first times they’d slept together. First as Batman and Superman in bunks on the opposite sides of a Javelin cargo bay. Second as Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne sprawled and exhausted in a hotel room after one of their earliest sexual encounters. And third, as alpha and omega during the first heat they shared together. All of the events made separate due to the drastically different roles they were playing at the time.

 

He couldn’t make such an easy dichotomy when it came to sex.

 

There was only ever one first time they had sex.

 

It had been his re-emergence into society. The night he walked, as an omega, back into the fold of Gotham elite intent on creating a scandal that would overshadow his recently exposed caste. He hadn’t expected Clark to be there, hadn’t expected any witnesses he remotely respected, and the uncertainly smiling reporter had stifled if not smothered the _fuck them all_ attitude he’d walked into the party carrying. How could he parade around and play the part of the billionaire playboy, all while secretly cursing everyone he smiled at, when the alpha that had been nothing but a friend and ally to him through the whole ordeal was there rescuing him from a spiked drink? How could he brutally paint the rest of the world the colour of an enemy when Clark stood by him no matter what? How could he entertain the childish fantasy that it was him against the injustice of the world?

 

He couldn’t. Not with Clark there. Not when the man was being his friend even behind the boxy shape of his suit and the horn rims of his glasses. The first alpha that had truly swung into his orbit since Talia.

 

When the party come to a close he’d tried to walk away. Tried to shake the tight threads of newfound desire he was feeling towards the other man, back away from this ‘strong safe’ alpha before he had a chance to prove otherwise, and leave. They hadn’t got one block before he ordered Alfred to turn around the car.

 

Bruce wasn’t blind. He knew from the very start the man was attractive. But it wasn’t that which has prompted him to invite the man into his car that night. _See_ , he’d told himself as they’d groped on the backseat of his car and Clark’s hands had come up to palm the cheeks of his arse. _See, he’s just like the others. He’s just another alpha. He’s just the same. Just like her._

 

The reason he’d had sex with Clark that night, or at least why he’d started to have sex with Clark that night, was to prove to the part of himself that was starting to look at the alpha with raw interest that the man was no different. The desire was unfounded, false.

 

_He won’t listen. He won’t respect. He won’t love. Not really._

_Not if you give yourself to him._

 

But then Clark, sensing his unhappiness, had offered to let Bruce top him.

 

“Only if you’re into it.”

 

Earnest, open, and unashamed. Lights years from the way the only other alpha that had given him that option; Talia, whispered in his ear as if it were a sin even to utter the words.

 

After that it stopped being about trying to prove to himself that Clark was just like all the others. It became a raw, furious, expression of sexuality. This man – Superman – was letting an omega top him. He was submitting to him. He was _enjoying_ it.

 

Bruce hadn’t consumed even half a standard drink of alcohol that night, but never had he felt more intoxicated. Drunk on the power Clark had willingly – wantonly – given him despite everything that said he should be the one lying back, begging, and receiving.

 

 _He’d_ given himself to _Bruce_.

 

“You were my first man,” Bruce whispered, remembering that night. “I’ve been attracted to men before but you’re still the only man I’ve ever slept with. I… I don’t know if you know that. I don’t know if you’ve figured it out or…” he trailed off. Not because Clark was asleep, but because it was irrelevant.

 

Clark’s gender wasn’t what made him different. It wasn’t what drove him to snatch the man off the street for their first rough regretful time together. It wasn’t what tempted him back for a second taste. It wasn’t what caused their relationship to spiral upwards from ‘friends’ to ‘friends that are fucking’ to ‘friends that are mating’ to ‘I just told him I loved him’ to ‘I have a bite on my neck’ to ‘bond mates’ to ‘been together for years’ to ‘we’re having a baby’.

 

It was Clark’s inherit goodness that, despite their fights and despite all Bruce’s early efforts to disprove it, burnt strong to this day.

 

It was the simple satisfaction of human contact without the risk of someone taking it too far or doing something he didn’t want in the heat of the moment.

 

It was also – he couldn’t deny – the raw sexual thrill Clark gave him when he dropped to his knees, showed his neck, or offered his body.

 

Clark had all the power in the world in his waking life. He was a man. He was an alpha. He was white. He was handsome. He was a super powered alien god. All the leg-ups imaginable and some that weren’t.

 

He’d also, at the time, been employed at a wage equal to that of his beta co-workers – something that was still an abnormally and spoke not just to the dedication and skill applied to his profession but that he was also an alpha who was diplomatic and charming enough to dispel employer alphaphobia.

 

Perhaps, Bruce remembered thinking, that overdose of power was why he seemed more than willing to surrender authority in a sexual situation. Perhaps Clark’s sexuality was a place where he could explore something his daily life hadn’t given him.

 

He couldn’t blame him if that were the truth. Bruce had little doubt his own fantasies of dominance and control had been aggravated by his status as an omega and the expectation towards submission that was laid upon him. If the man craved the opposite of what society had intended then he was merely the other side to the same coin.

 

But Clark, Bruce soon discovered, was versatile. He greedily submitted to a controlling sexual authority and wasn’t shy to kneel to make Bruce feel more comfortable. But, when Bruce started broadening the scope of their encounters it because quickly clear Clark – despite the obvious pleasure he took from embracing the taboo and submitting to Bruce – could also be an equal or even controlling force in a sexual situation.

 

The only thing he seemed uncomfortable doing was being downright dominant. He didn’t growl, he didn’t order, and didn’t ask for any form of submission. He was happy to lead, he was happy to follow, he was happy to debase himself… but he would never debase Bruce.

 

Perhaps that was his Kryptonian instinct. He’d certainly never seen Clark growl or use submissive or dominant body language beside what was obviously consciously learnt and employed. He knew Clark was different and didn’t bother trying to pretend he wasn’t. And if Clark’s biology meant he was more likely to be a submissive alpha – an abnormally on Earth – it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was, through a series of unlikely events, they matched.

 

But, it seemed, not all of Clark’s alien instincts were so benign.

 

“I didn’t mean to give you an order you couldn’t disobey,” Bruce whispered. “I didn’t mean to tie you in chains.”

 

 _But,_ he silently added, _even if I did I would have._

 

“I was trying to protect pup,” he continued. “You were trying to protect both of us, I know, but I…” he sighed and turned his face into the pillow as it turned into a groan. His back was still aching. Worse now. He should roll away from Clark and find a more comfortable position. He should do a lot of things he never did.

 

“I love you, Clark. I know I don’t say that a lot but it’s true. I know this is a fight we’ve put a hold on and… we’ll figure it out.”

 

Just like somehow they’d figured out how to have a relationship despite everything he did wrong when they first had sex. Despite his inexperience and poor judgement when it came to their early relationship. Despite the world of reasons why it shouldn’t have worked.

 

But then, reasoning said Talia – his perfect hormonal equaliser who shared his fundamental hatred for the world’s injustice – would be his perfect partner and not the awkward endearing alien curled up behind him.

 

“I don’t want to fight about this later. I don’t. If it was instinct that made you carry me out of that hospital then it has to have a trigger. Just like me and the sound of an alpha growl. We’ll learn what it is and teach you how to override it.” A pause. “But I won’t apologise.”

 

Soft. So soft he wouldn’t have noticed but for the movement of air against the back of his neck. “I’m sorry.”

 

Bruce stiffened, closed his eyes, and sighed. “How long have you been awake?”

 

Clark gently kissed the back of his neck. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t want you to be sorry. I know why you did it. I understand…” he thought of Clark unconscious in the batcave and what he would have done – all the things he would have done – to make sure he opened his eyes again. Even things Clark wouldn’t have approved of. “I understand.”

 

Clark held him tighter doing nothing to ease the ache in his back.

 

Bruce didn’t protest.

 

The door opened again.

 

“ _Ten_ minutes,” Bruce hissed. “I said _ten_.”

 

“I’m sorry,” the woman glanced at Clark and then quickly away, noticing that he was now awake. “Dr Thompkins will be here shortly. I really want to look at you once more before she arrives.”

 

“It’s okay,” the alpha said softly. “I’ll get up. She needs to look at you. That’s fine.”

 

He wanted to say something to stop him but couldn’t conjure a logical excuse before the man pulled away and moved towards the door.

 

“You don’t have to leave,” the woman said. She was keeping her gaze away from Clark, avoiding direct eye contact. Socially, a direct eye contact among strangers outside the beta caste was rude. Alphas locked gazes with omegas they were interested in and alphas they were challenging. Because of this omegas of Bruce’s generation were – in the pursuit of modesty – encouraged to keep their gazes lowered. Betas typically gave a strange alpha the same room when the alpha was stressed in order to avoid being mistaken for a threat. It was a nicety some believed the next generation was growing out of, fuelled by pop songs with omega stars staring improperly unashamed down the barrel of the camera. Whatever the case, this woman clearly hadn’t abandoned it yet.

 

“Stay,” Bruce made the sudden choice. If she was, out of respect, avoiding Clark’s gaze the odds of her recognising Superman were low. Besides that, he didn’t want to be away from Clark’s scent as the beta approached. She apologetically propped a pillow between his knees and pulled down his pants.

 

She paused when the movement caused him to stiffen. “Can you feel something?”

 

“No.”

 

“But you’re in pain,” she concluded and gently pinched the skin on his thigh. “Do you feel that?”

 

“Not really.”

 

“Not really or no?” she pushed.

 

“Not really,” he said again.

 

“You shouldn’t be feeling that at all. Have you ever had a spinal injury?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Low?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Your epidural might not be taking full effect,” she muttered. “Or perhaps it’s wearing off quickly.”

 

“What does that mean?” Clark asked nervously.

 

“It means we want to hurry things along,” she assured him kindly, still not looking directly at his eyes. “We can’t give him two epidurals so once this one’s worn off we’ll only be able to rely on much weaker pain medication. Considering the pain he was in on the way here I don’t think that’s something we want to do.”

 

Bruce digested this information as she lubricated and slipped some fingers inside him. “Can Leslie do surgery if they can’t use pain medication?”

 

“If she acts quickly. Which she can. She’s almost got her team assembled,” the midwife bent down to inspect him as her fingers slipped out. “But we might not need to bother with that.”

 

He shifted. “I’m dilated?”

 

“Not just that, dear. Baby’s head’s dropped.”

 

A pang of fear shot through him. “She’s coming through? Now?”

 

“Yes. I touched her head. Got some hair that one.”

 

He blinked up at her. Stunned. “You touched her?” A soft inquiry.

 

The woman smiled at him. “I touched her.”

 

She touched her. She actually _touched_... He tried to twist over his shoulder. “C-can I?”

 

“Not quite yet,” she said. “But let’s take things slow. Step by step. How much pain do you feel? Does your lower back hurt?”

 

“Yes,” he admitted.

 

“What kind of pain?”

 

“Aching. Mild.”

 

“Do you feel like you need to go to the toilet?”

 

“I…” he thought about it. “I can’t tell. I don’t think so.”

 

“That’s fine,” she assured him. “You may feel it soon or you may not feel it at all.”

 

He turned his gaze to Clark. The alpha’s hair was rumbled on one side, glasses sitting low on his face, and eyes wide with wonder as he scanned Bruce’s abominable. Clearly what he was looking at was different than before. Of course it was. She was coming through his cervix. She was coming.

 

“Should I push or…?”

 

“Only when you have a contraction,” she said. “But, because of the epidural, pushing has limited effectiveness. Don’t feel like you’re failing if you can’t push or if you push and you don’t really feel like you’re doing anything. I’m going to go tell Leslie what’s happened, okay? I’ll be right back.”

 

Bruce watched the midwife leave and then turned back to Clark, still gazing at that spot between his hips. “What does she look like?”

 

“Like she always does,” Clark said. “Beautiful. Just like you. God, Bruce why didn’t you wake me up if you were in pain?”

 

He slid a hand over his bulge, trying to detect a difference in its shape and feel. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

 

With a hint of breathless mirth. “You were going to give birth quietly rather than disturb me?”

 

“It’s uncomfortable, not…”

 

“I know you Bruce. Your ‘uncomfortable’ is a few levels above most people’s agony.”

 

“No,” he struggled. “That’s not true.” Softer. “That’s not what I meant.”

 

“What did you mean?”

 

He wished in that moment he had Clark’s gift for language; not his ability to write but his far more impressive skill of being able to simply open his mouth and speak in a way that conveyed both honesty and emotion. He wished he could just tell Clark he’d been comforted by his sleeping presence. By his resting scent. He wished he could just open his mouth and say that. He wished he had that power. “We… haven’t slept beside each other in a while…” he tried. “I didn’t want to…”

 

That was enough. He saw understanding light behind Clark’s eyes as the terrified untamed smile that had been playing at the edge of his mouth bloomed. “Oh Bruce.” He leant over him, hand joining Bruce’s on his belly, and pressed a warm kiss onto his lips. Understanding, not through any merit of Bruce’s words, but because – unlike Talia – he listened.

 

Even when they fought, even when they fucked, Clark cared enough to listen.

 

He cared, he respected, and he loved. He always had.

 

“C-Clark I…”

 

Breathlessly. “Yes?”

 

“You know I… you’re a good… what I said before… because you’re my mate and… I love…”

 

“Shh,” Clark pecked him teasingly on the chin. “I know. I know. But, Christ, I’m having a moment here. A scary, beautiful, crazy moment. Jesus, Bruce, are we seriously about to have a baby? Is that what’s happening now?”

 

“I think so.”

 

“I… around everything I…” Clark slid a hand through his hair. “She’s going to be okay. I’m going to make sure you’re both okay. Okay? I love you. I love you both so much.”

 

Bruce tried to ward off his fears with the strength of Clark’s assurance. It was no easy feat. He couldn’t feel what was going on, couldn’t feel the girl kicking or moving inside him. All he had – the only indicator of labour detectable to him – was the stink of blood and the memory of his placenta ripping off his womb wall. A stark and terrifying odour and an even more frightening recollection.

_You’re okay, pup. You’re going to be okay. The blood is mine. All mine. Your daddy’s here. He loves you. He’ll protect you. You’re going to be okay._

 

Clark must have detected a change in his scent because instantly he was on the bed again, gently rubbing his stomach. “You sure you’re okay? It doesn’t hurt too much?”

 

He shook his head. “No…”

 

“Hey, it’ll be okay. You’re both going to be—”

 

Leslie burst into the room, pulled a stool over to the bedside, and pointed a finger at Clark. “You. Up.”

 

The alpha quickly obeyed. After a second exam the doctor puffed out her cheeks. “Baby’s sure in a rush. Looks like you might be doing this the old fashioned way after all, Bruce. But,” she continued when he opened his mouth to say something. “You’re still bleeding. If you keep bleeding after the birth or it intensifies at any point me and my team will be ready to act. Understand?”

 

He nodded.

 

“Okay.” She smiled. “Otherwise, congratulations. I can’t wait to meet her. It’s on you now.”

 

The following hour was the strangest of his life. Not beautiful. Not ugly. Not even truly painful. He could feel something going on. It even sometimes hurt. But not badly enough to warrant much attention. Nothing more than a flinch, a grunt, or a sigh. Clark was there through it all despite the danger of discovery, and Bruce couldn’t find the rationality he needed to dismiss the man. Not at this moment. At this inexplicably ordinary moment. A moment where the clock kept ticking, where he still needed water and Chap Stick, and to stop and urinate in the small sized children’s toilet.

 

Yet despite the mundanity of it, it was strangely earth shattering.

 

Then… “Okay Mr Wayne,” the midwife was between his legs again, unashamedly throwing herself across the bed to inspect him. “She’s here.”

 

He frowned. “Here? She’s not h— _ah_!”

 

The burning between his legs flared bright as his insides lurched downward. It was the first spark of real pain he’d felt since receiving the epidural. Enough to wrench forth a single choked off cry from his lips and bring Clark racing from his knee to his elbow.

 

“Bruce! Are you okay? Are you…?”

 

The midwife pulled a small flailing red thing away from Bruce and put it on his belly.

 

Confusion, fear, shock, love. _Pup. Is that…? Are you…?_

 

“H-how do I hold her?” She was wriggling against him. God, she was… “How do I hold her?!” He couldn’t put his hands on her. What if he broke her? What if he…

 

“Shh,” the midwife guided his palms down to creature on his belly and showed him how to pull her up until she was squirming bloody on his breast. “Babies are scared of two things in the world, Mr Wayne. Loud noises, and falling. Oh dear, you smell awful little thing. Let’s just towel her off.”

 

Bruce lay frozen, hands awkwardly under the girl’s arms as she let out tiny gurgling cry. “What do I do? Is she okay? Do we…?”

 

The midwife returned with the towel and quickly rubbed the worst of the blood off the baby before yanking open Bruce’s shirt and resettling her against his bare flesh. Another sob, and the woman adjusted her again so her mouth locked onto his right nipple.

 

The feeling was more alien than anything else he could imagine but it triggered something deep inside him. He wrapped his arms around her and hunched forward to inhale the scent of her skin. Blood. Thick, foul, and strong. But, as the midwife kept towelling her off, he caught wind of another aroma. And, in an instant, Clark no longer had the most beautiful smell in the world.

 

He looked up to see the other man standing nearby, glasses gone and eyes wet.

 

“Clark, she’s… can you smell her? She’s… I’ve never had a baby before. I-I don’t know how…”

 

Clark moved closer and settled beside him. Slowly, carefully, he reached out and touched the feeding baby. Gently stroking his fingers down her back and cheek. Every motion awash with wonder. He didn’t say a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is so late and mostly takes place inside Bruce's head. Things are a tad busy right now so chapters might be a little slow but be assured I am working on them. Regardless, it's been absolutely wonderful hearing from you all and thanks so much for the continued love and support especially those hanging on waiting for JayDick. I know they're frustratingly aloof right now but I promise their time will come.


	35. Chapter 35

Damian’s lung hurt.

 

No, that wasn’t true. Damian’s _brother’s_ lung hurt.

 

The foreign organ sat misshapen and heavy in his chest. Like a lump of clay. Almost as painful as the damaged tissue it replaced. That, alongside the tug and sting of the fresh surgical scar under his arm, made the journey from Wayne Enterprises to Gotham General nothing short of torturous.

 

And for what?

 

Why did he have to leave the safety of the company just to see a baby? He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to _know_ her.

 

He didn’t want to see his father either. His father who would give birth right after his mother died. Who would brush her aside and return unhindered to the life he was living previously. Who would create a biological family unit and pretend it was his first… as if he and his mother meant nothing. As if he could just forget about her and move on. As if she were just another enemy defeated and packed away into an Arkham cell.

 

He had no illusions as to the morality of his mother. He knew she had to be stopped. But that didn’t mean she didn’t matter. That didn’t mean her death didn’t matter. That didn’t mean it was okay for his father to roll over and have a baby.

 

A true blooded baby. A baby he had with his mate. His mate that he loved.

 

“I know you didn’t like Lisa but how about Melissa?”

 

“No.”

 

“You sure? We could call her Mel—”

 

“No.”

 

“Okay. No Mel. What about Lily?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh, come on.  I really like Lil—” Clark stopped as the door swung open and the pack filtered slowly, almost reverently, into the hospital room.

 

Alfred came first, eyes fixed not on the small boxlike crib wedged between the two men but Bruce who looked as white as the sheet he was wrapped in. He was followed by Ma Kent who held her hand uncertainly over her lips. Conner and Tim were next, neck and neck in the contest of ‘most awkward’ as they hovered in the middle of the group. Damian crossed the threshold last, towed in behind Dick.

 

No one stepped too deep into the room. Instead they clumped by the doorway as if stuck behind an invisible barrier. A precedent that had clearly been established before they arrived as Jason also seemed to be trapped in the fishbowl of space. Now jostled sideways by the sudden press of bodies.

 

Bruce sat up as they entered. Confusion tugging his brows forward towards his nose. “You’re here?”

 

With those two words Damian felt the haphazard spider web of pack bonds between them throb. _Together. All together at last._

 

Alfred broke through the barrier and stepped forward to unapologetically seize the pack leader’s face and press a kiss onto Bruce’s brow. Clark instead received a bear hug from his mother and Dick stole the opportunity to abandon Damian and slink almost shyly toward the baby.

 

Whatever he saw inside the crib gave him pause.

 

“Is she?” The beta asked. “I… can I? How do you hold her?”

 

Bruce. “I don’t know.”

 

Ma Kent poked her head out of Clark’s bulky bear hug. “I can. I can show you how. It’s…”

 

“No,” the omega said, voice teetering toward a growl for a moment before he reigned it back. “No. Don’t. She’s… let her lie there. She’s early she shouldn’t… let her lie.”

 

Dick obeyed and instead bent over to nervously scent the air and reach into the crib to touch the creature. Every action slow, careful, and watched with frightening intensity by Bruce.

 

“W-wow she smells like… I don’t know… I mean, I know but I can’t… it’s kind of like…”

 

“Lemons,” Jason muttered.

 

Dick paused for a moment and slowly glanced over his shoulder at the alpha. They shared a look, estranged and awkward.

 

Jason looked away. “That’s just what I reckoned when I... no, it’s stupid.”

 

“No. Yeah. You’re right.” Dick turned back to the baby. “Lemons.”

 

Bruce looked decidedly unhappy with this assessment but didn’t say anything as Dick lent forward to nuzzle the tiny invader. An action that would allow the baby to inhale his scent and begin build on the groundwork of a bond she would already share with him.

 

“Happy Birthday, Lemons.”

 

Babies were born sharing the bonds of their bearer. Any pack bonds Bruce had she would already have in a weaker less established fashion. The pack still needed to bond with her in return but it would – thanks to the intensity of her newborn pheromones – take days rather than weeks.

 

That lag ceased to exist when it came to parental bonds. She would already have a full parental bond with Bruce and, by merit of being Bruce’s bond mate throughout the pregnancy, Clark as well once he bonded her back.

 

He thought of the months – nigh on a year – it had taken for him to create that bond with his father. He thought of all the things he’d done to earn that connection. The time, the communication, the growth. And now, a thing not yet old enough to think, was getting given the same privilege.

 

Worse, because he created the parental hormonal bond when his father was pregnant there was a chance he would walk over there and feel the start of not just a pack but a sibling bond between him and the newborn.

 

He settled himself stiffly on the opposite side of the room, well away from where he might be at risk of scenting her, and glared at the tiny crib.

 

Ma Kent and then Alfred each took a moment to say hello to the baby, the butler smiling softly and Martha gushing in an even drier than usual Midwestern accent about becoming a grandmother. They both respected Bruce’s wishes and didn’t pick her up. Damian was fine with that. If no one picked her up the wall of the hospital crib kept her blocked form his view.

 

Perhaps he might be able to escape without ever having to look at her.

 

Perhaps he might even be able to find a hygienic place in which he could make sure he didn’t reinfect his new lung.

 

Perhaps he might be able to give himself the space his father had clearly not needed to mourn his mother.

 

Conner – the coward that couldn’t even kiss him – finally plucked up the courage to approach the baby trailed by a terrified looking Tim. Neither nuzzled or kissed the baby the way the betas did but, after some hesitation, Conner reached out to gently touch her.

 

She let out a broken sob and the young alpha leapt back as if he’d been stung.

 

“W-what did I do?”

 

Bruce had lurched forward at the sound and looked torn between leaping off the bed to attack Conner and making sure the baby was okay. He chose the latter and reached into the basket to awkwardly soothe the small wailing thing.

 

“It’s okay,” Martha put her arm around the stunned alpha. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Bruce just doesn’t have a bond with you. _She_ doesn’t have a bond with you. She doesn’t know you yet.”

 

“B-but Ma. You…”

 

“…I’m a beta,” the woman finished for him. “You’re a strange alpha. You’re scary.”

 

“But I…”

 

She squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t’ worry, she’ll get used to you pretty fast. In the meantime just make sure she can smell her daddy or a pack mate as well as you. You’re a high level. Your scent is strong, and you’re an alpha so your scent glands are on your wrists. She could probably only smell you for a second there and got a bit worried.”

 

Nervously. “R-right.”

 

All the same he didn’t go too close to her again. A choice Bruce seemed to approve of.

 

Tim stayed at her side for the obligatory minimum duration before scurrying back across the room.

 

He would have taken some comfort in the older boy’s obvious ill ease if he didn’t feel the prickle of eyes turning to him. The rest of the pack had seen her. Now they were waiting on him.

 

He pretended not to notice and kicked at some invisible dust on the floor as Clark struck up another string of name suggestions.

 

“Rose is nice.”

 

“No.”

 

“But it’s n—”

 

“No.”

 

“Jazmine.” The alpha moved on quickly. “I’ve always liked Jazmine.”

 

“No.”

 

“Why?” Clark asked, exasperated.

 

“I don’t like the nicknames.”

 

“Nicknames aren’t…”

 

“He’s not Richard,” Bruce jerked his head towards Dick. “Nicknames matter.”

 

“But…”

 

“Why are all your favourite names flower names?”

 

“At least I have favourite names.” The alien said indigently. “What names _do_ you like?”

 

Bruce was sullenly silent.

 

“We have to name her _something_ , Bruce.”

 

Low. “I am aware.”

 

“Hey,” Dick knelt down in front of him, snatching his gaze away from his father. “You okay?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Yeah? You sure?”

 

Again. “Yeah.”

 

Dick didn’t move.

 

“Lung hurts,” Damian admitted after a while. He hated with Dick knelt in front of him. There was no submission in the action, merely an attempt to put their eye lines on a more even level. In doing so the beta forgot he was tall enough that they were closer when they were both standing. He treated him like a child. “It’s nothing.”

 

“I’m sorry for moving you. The researchers said it was okay an hour ago and…”

 

“I don’t care,” he lied.

 

The beta looked up at him, anxiously trying to read his expression. Finally, with a sigh of defeat he straightened. “You’re like a little mini Bruce sometimes you know. Like, enough that it’s almost scary. Come on,” he took his hand. “Let’s go and meet Lemons.”

 

He tried to pull his hand back. “No. Get off me, Grayson.”

 

“It’s fine,” he pulled him. “You’re pack. She won’t cry at you. You don’t have to be afraid.”

 

“I’m not afraid!”

The room lapsed into silence. He saw Drake look at him and then away, saw Martha with her head respectfully lowered, and Jason watching on with unashamed indifference. The whole pack, and those not pack, suddenly and silently observing. Imparting an aura of shame without even meaning to.

 

He shrugged Dick off him, looked around, and – left with no other option – approached the crib.

 

The first thing he noticed was her nappy. It was large enough to consume the bottom half of her torso and left her bare legs splayed like that of a frog on the blanket beneath her. A pink woollen cap had been pulled down over a single tuft of curled black hair and a tag with the word ‘Wayne’ scribbled across it attached to her right ankle. Otherwise she was naked, a state made possible by the gentle heaters set around the cribs edge.

 

An open incubator designed to allow a baby to scent and be scented in turn.

 

A scent that was penetrating the lingering stench of blood and touching him. Fresh. Zesty. New.

 

_Pack._

 

“You can touch her,” Clark prompted gently.

 

He obediently reached into the newborn’s personal space and let his fingers rest against the fat bend of her knee. He hated her and himself for the prickle of a potential bond he felt thrumming between them.

 

“I’ve always liked Zoey,” Dick suggested from behind him.

 

Clark shook his head. “He doesn’t like the letter Z.”

 

“Z?”

 

“People with names starting with Z have a statistical tendency to put themselves last,” Bruce muttered.

 

“What about names beginning with A?” Tim posed the question quietly. “Like… Alice?”

 

One would have to be deaf not to notice the pause before Bruce’s response. “No.” Another moment of time. “Not Alice.”

 

“But you like A?” Clark zeroed in.

 

“Not exclusively…”

 

“But you do like it?”

 

“Amy’s nice,” Martha suggested.

 

“Alex?” Conner added.

 

“Abigail,” Alfred threw in.

 

Damian listened to the tidal the wave of suggestions and rejections and felt something bitter and black well inside him. They all sounded so… _fine_. Not happy. No. Not quite that. But okay. Content. Perhaps even having a little bit of fun.

 

And why shouldn’t they? They were together. They had won. And the enemy… the enemy was dead.

 

He snatched his hand away from the baby and turned to his father. His careless _happy_ father.

 

“What about Talia?”

 

Once more the room dipped into silence but this time he waited it out. This time he wouldn’t let them shame him into compliance. This time his father would answer to him.

 

Bruce. “Damian…”

 

“Why not? It’s a nice name. It’s doesn’t begin with an A but, you know, _statistically_ there is probably something wrong with A names too. _Statistically_ there probably more likely to be pushy, or suicidal, or maybe _they’re_ more likely to be the leaders of an ancient order of assassins. Statistically there is nothing wrong with the name Talia. It was two As in it. It’s a _family_ name.”

 

Dick. “Hey, Dami. That’s…” he put a hand on his shoulder.

 

Damian shrugged it off without turning around or acknowledging him. Kept his eyes locked on his father. “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. Al Ghul isn’t your family anymore is it? We don’t subscribe to your stupid self-centred world views so we’re the enemy. We believe in honouring traditional caste roles and rank so we’re not worth your love. So what if you mixed your blood with ours? That doesn’t mean…”

 

“Damian,” Clark this time. “You don’t… you’re not…”

 

“I am!” He rounded on the alien. _“Ismii Damian ibn Talia ibn Ra’s al Ghul! Ismii al Ghul! Ana al Ghul!_ _Ana lasto ibn al xu'ffasch!_ ”

 

His voice wasn’t very loud. He could barely raise it above a ragged husk. Despite it the baby chose that moment to start to cry and he heard his father shift on his bed as he moved to respond to her. That little action, amid everything, was like nails down a chalkboard. Offensive, blunt, and painful. It jerked him around to glare once more at the man. The man who wasn’t even attempting to respond to him. The man who didn’t care that his mother had died. The man who sired him.

 

He had to have loved his mother at some point to do that. He had to have loved her as much as he loved Clark to lay with her and let her take his seed. He had to. But, just then, the only thing he cared about was the mewling baby. Not Clark, not his mother, and not Damian.

 

“I hate you,” he spat at the old omega, pushed past Dick, and fled the room.

 

He couldn’t run fast. He couldn’t run far.

 

It didn’t matter. No one followed him anyway.

 

He came to a stop in a large open room, collapsed in the corner, and fought through dry ragged sobs. Every breath a new jarring agony.

 

Outside he could see the imposing dark shape of Wayne Enterprises. In that building, only a few hours ago, his biological brother was butchered for his organs. His father ordered the act not just to save his life but for the greater good his organs might do donated or used in medical research.

 

If Damian had been on the other side of his mother’s artificial womb that would have been him. Cut up and distributed.

 

That’s what he felt like was happening now. He was being cut up. Hacked away at until all the pieces of him that didn’t fit through the ‘Wayne’ cookie cutter were gone. The parts of him his pack didn’t want to know, see, or love. The parts of him that were bad like who is mother was and where he came from.

 

He wasn’t just another adopted indulgence. He wasn’t just another pity case paraded through on the patronage of his father’s guilt. He was an heir. An heir to the throne of al Ghul. He was proof that Clark wasn’t the first alpha his father loved. He meant something. Talia meant something. They weren’t just… nothing.

 

Even if she was evil. Even if he was a low level omega. Even if…

 

“Robin?”

 

His head jerked up fast enough to wrench at his neck. Standing in the doorway was a cluster of children in matching blue hospital issue pyjamas. Some of them he recognised – the girl with the dark brown eyes, the boy with the frizzy hair, and the toddler with a thumb stuck in her mouth – and some were strangers. In the thick of them was a boy. Tall, gangly, with orange hair and a square tipped nose.

 

“Colin?” He rasped.

 

The red head stared at him. “It _is_ you.”

 

“I… I thought you…”

 

Colin broke away from the group and moved shyly forward to settle himself at Damian’s side. The others kept their distance but found places nearby to huddle, whisper, and watch.

 

Damian furiously wiped tears from his face. “What are y-you doing here? H-how…?”

 

“They caught us,” he said. “The police. Jackie got away. So did Maddox, Peg, Hannah, Tiff, and Lea. But they got us. They get you too?”

 

He didn’t answer that question. Still rubbing furiously at the wet around his eyes.

 

“I thought you were going home,” the boy said softly.

 

“I-I tried. I did. I… I had to come here.”

 

Colin seemed to take something from this Damian didn’t understand. “Do they think you got jabbed?”

 

“What? No.”

 

“They know I got jabbed,” the boy said. “They think we all did. They’re keeping us here to make sure no one has prepubescent presenting complications,” he said the words carefully. A phase he’d learned rather than understood. “Plus they keep asking us what happened when we got stuck.”

 

“Asking?” Damian rasped.

 

“Like… did your mouth taste funny? Did you wet yourself? Did you feel hot? Did your neck itch? Did you itch downstairs? Did you feel dizzy? Did you feel sick?”

 

Damian tried to force himself to snort. “Why don’t they just ask ‘what caste were you?’ Are they stupid enough to think we don’t know what a beta or an alpha smells like?”

 

Colin looked somewhat ashamed when he responded. “I… are you sure I was an alpha? I got bit at the same time so…”

 

“You were an alpha,” he told him.

 

The boy looked down. “I didn’t tell them that. They kept asking. I got nervous. I stayed quiet. And they know I got hit because they found the mark. Now I think they think I’m an omega. A-and I don’t want to tell them they’re wrong because they’re sorting out foster homes for everyone but me and I don’t want to go to another foster home.”

 

Damian wasn’t surprised. He knew the government didn’t just palm off omega children. The risk of people adopting or fostering them for nefarious purposes was considered just too great. Even Drake, despite presenting after arriving in the Wayne household, had apparently been subject to scrutiny from social services for a short time after his first heat. A bitter black part of Damian wondered if deciding he was safe was motivated by honour or by the threat of the Wayne lawyers which had already been trying to push through the adoption papers.

 

“I’m glad I found you,” Colin whispered.

 

“I’m sorry I left,” he said back.

 

“Can I tell you a secret?”

 

“Okay.”

 

The boy shuffled closer to him. “I saw Superman.”

 

He hugged his sides and looked back out the window. “Oh.”

 

They lapsed into silence and Damian wondered what it would be like to be raised looking a superheroes in the newspaper. To look _up_ to them. He always knew of heroes. But there were more important things in his life growing up.

 

When he was six he passed all of the demon trials and became a full member of the League of Assassins. He was the youngest person ever to do so. Perhaps he still was. It was no easy feat. To pass the trials and be admitted into the League one had to drink a cup of ‘Demon’s Blood’. Something he now knew was a mix of liquid fear toxin, Lazarus, and a whole host of other mind bending chemicals. Most of them hallucinogens. Under that state one then had to survive a sword fight against ten men, solve a puzzle, and ascend to the throne of al Ghul to pledge allegiance and kill a criminal.

 

He remembered standing bloody, bruised, and with a broken arm at the foot of his grandfather’s throne, the body of a thief splayed out headless on the stone floor. He remembered grinning as he was bestowed the rank of assassin even as shadowy monsters continued to dance out the corner of his eyes.

 

His father had failed the demon trials but he hadn’t. He’d passed. He was an assassin. He would be the heir of al Ghul.

 

It was an estranged wretched sweet memory. An ugly twin to his mother’s rejection of him four years later when she turned him over to his father and replaced him with his brother. Just like he was being replaced by his sister now. A new better stronger _truer_ heir.

 

The thought made his eyes heat and breath rasp.

 

His mother was dead, he was being replaced, and none of it mattered. None of it was in his power or control. None of it was affecting anyone else but him.

 

Colin leant against him, shocking away the first prickle of tears, and pressing the flat casteless scent of his boyhood against his scenes. Simple yet pleasing like the smell of freshly struck matches.

 

He sat, sapping a small gentle comfort from the unexpected presence of the other boy and the faux pack of children clustered around them. It wasn’t enough to smother the bitter wretched hurt still frothing behind his ribs – chucky and heavy like his new lung – but it helped. More than he could ever admit out loud. It ended when the children around him jumped up with a yell of fright and clumped together like a flock of disturbed pigeons at the park.

 

His father wheeled himself into the room on a wheelchair, bedding bundled around his waist, and brows drawn as he studied the nervous swarm of children. The smell of blood clinging to him was strong enough to undercut his own oppressive omega allure. It was also smelt, Damian noticed, fresher than it did before.

 

Colin remained huddled at his side as the adult approached.

 

“That was unnecessary,” Bruce said. Soft. Low.

 

“ _Tt_ ,” he fixed his glare out the window as the bubble of anger he thought had popped lurched back to life inside him. “You smell like a stuck pig.”

 

“Who’s this?” Bruce didn’t take the bait.

 

“He’s my best friend.” He didn’t dignify the man with anymore explanation.

 

“Hm,” the omega wheeled himself closer. “I’m Damian’s father.”

 

“R-Robin? I-I,” Colin was shaking beside him. “Y-you said that your dad was Ba—?”

 

“He is my father,” Damian interrupted before the boy could name the superhero persona. “Not my dad.”

 

“But is he…?”

 

“I wasn’t lying.” He didn’t lie when he said his name was Damian. He didn’t lie when he said he father was Batman. He didn’t lie when he said he had a pack.

 

For a moment he wished he had. He wished he was some dumb boy named Robin who couldn’t use a sword, spoke like Todd, and was part of a puppy pack. He wished, for a moment, that was all he knew and all he could be. No success. Not failure. Nothing but sitting with Colin and stealing pizza.

 

“Stand up,” Bruce ordered.

 

He toyed with the idea of not obeying. Two things stopped him. He liked to think it was because Bruce was the pack leader. It was instinct that pulled him reluctantly to his feet. But, deeper, he knew it was because in a twisted way this was what he wanted – attention – and Bruce was not the type to stick around if he spurned him.

 

“Show me your side.”

 

Damian pulled up his shirt to display the long curved scar under his arm. Puckered and new but held together with a bio-gel engineered at Wayne Med.

 

“Impressive.”

 

“It’s just a scar.”

 

“It’s healing fast, as are you. Very fast. I can’t help but wonder if your brother had Lazarus in his cells as part of the mutations that helped his growth.”

 

“You can’t say that,” he hissed. “Not in front of…” he glanced at Colin.

 

“I don’t see why not, since you’ve evidently deemed him trustworthy.” There was no accusation in the words. Merely a statement of fact.

 

“You _are_ Batman,” the red head whispered in wonder. “I-I saw Superman before. Is he here to see you? I-is Wonder Woman here? Is Green Lantern? Captain Marvel? Aquaman?”

 

Bruce ignored him, reached out, and – conscious of where his scar was – pulled Damian towards him. It was, like all their embraces, awkward and stiff. A clumsy attempt at closeness that neither of them were comfortable or competent with. But trapped within the heavy confines of the man’s arm’s Damian felt Bruce run his neck up against him. Marking him with his omega scent in a universal motion of parental bonding.

 

In Arabic. _“I miss her too.”_

 

“No you don’t. You’re happy she’s gone.”

 

_“I am relieved. I cannot be happy.”_

 

“But you are happy. Your baby is born. I know you’re happy.”

 

_“That does not mean you and your mother are not impor—”_

 

“Shut up!” Damian snapped. “I would rather hear you speak your language than butcher hers!” He hiccupped on the last word and with a groan of defeat buried his face in Bruce’s shoulder as the tears he’d been fighting back blurred across his vision.

 

“She matters,” Bruce whispered. “You both do. I promise you that, Damian. I promise you.”

 

“C-crying h-hurts…” he managed.

 

“Then breathe with me.”

 

Damian tried to match the man’s slow steady intakes of air and almost gagged at the gory scent of blood hit the back of his throat. “You s-smell _so_ bad.”

 

The omega sighed and peeled back some of the sheets around his middle. The blankets bundled under him were saturated with red. “I started bleeding heavily again when I got out of bed.”

 

“Is it… afterbirth?”

 

“No.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

“I’ve already done that.”

 

“You should go back,” Damian wriggled out of his embrace. “T-tell the others.”

 

“You’re part of the pack, Damian. My daughter is now too. But she’s her own part. Not your part. I want you with them.”

 

“I…” he looked at Colin.

 

“He can come.” It was a split second strategic-less decision. Something that shouldn’t belong on his father’s lips. A strange surrendering to emotional attachment. Or perhaps, Damian realised an hour later as he sat with Colin outside the operating theatre, a kindness to help ease him back into the fold. No one spoke to him when Bruce towed him back into the pack. No one looked at him as Dr Leslie Thompkins quickly assessed the situation. No one breached the awkward bubble of space around him as Clark protested the inevitable.

 

“He was fine! You don’t need to…”

 

“Your mate can’t lose much more blood,” Leslie didn’t waste words. “I’m sorry. I know this is drastic but I’m not risking any other option at this point.”

 

“It’s okay,” Bruce told his alpha. “I don’t need it anymore, Clark. It’s okay.”

 

“No, Bruce, no. She’s talking about cutting out…”

 

“I know. It’s okay, Clark. We have our baby. I… I only ever wanted one baby. It’s okay.”

 

Damian leant against Colin and took those words in. _It’s okay._ Not good. Not great. Not perfect like the world his mother always talked about creating. Not just like the world his father always fought for. But okay… and just then amidst the grief, the change, and the alienation okay was enough.


	36. Chapter 36

And then it was over.

 

It didn’t feel right that, after everything they’d been through, life continued on in the same well-worn rut. But it did. They came back to the manor, Alfred made lunch, and the younger members of the pack started catching up on school work. Tim eagerly, Kon grudgingly, and Damian listlessly.

 

In around it all Bruce, still stiff and unstable post op, was slowly but surely learning how to take care of his baby. He still wasn’t comfortable with her but there seemed to be a fevered need to care for her that eclipsed even his fear of holding her. Dick watched the man nervously remove her from her carrier, study Alfred change a nappy like it was a complex criminal case, and awkwardly attempt to breastfeed only to fail until Martha assured him he could pull his shirt right open.

 

It was then, watching his pack leader clumsily hold a sobbing pink infant to his new triangular breast, that her presence among them finally registered with Dick.

 

A baby. An actual baby.

 

The pack had a baby.

 

That realisation, mixed in with a prickling of unfamiliar but undeniable beta instinct, drove him to start trying to put everything that had been broken back together. To try and put the pack the way it was before Leviathan. To find the peace, ease, and annoyances that existed before they were almost destroyed by Talia.

 

He forced Damian to play a round of _Ninja Warrior_ with him in which he deliberately lost every fight, took over a part of Alfred’s staggering cleaning roster despite the older beta’s protests, and attempted an awkward heart to heart with Tim over why he hadn’t been eating. When the omega told him that Kon was practically hurling food at him he pulled aside the young alpha and talked to him about making sure he didn’t come on too strong.

 

All of it was clumsy, awkward, and unwanted. A parade of inept attempts to repair the fractures Talia’s attack had sent shooting through the pack.

 

All fractures but the one lying large and ugly between him and Jason.

 

_Oh God, am I breaking up with Jason? I can’t break up with Jason. I wouldn’t survive that. I know I wouldn’t. I need him. I love him. He… Oh God. Oh fuck. Oh no._

 

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm and kept moving. Kept fixing.

 

If he couldn’t be helpful as a pack diplomat there were a lot of little jobs that needed to be done. The solar lamps in the medical bay needed to be packed away, the bike missing from its park needed to be returned, and the stack of love poetry still sitting on the evidence table needed to be destroyed.

 

He left that till last in the hopes someone else would take it away.

 

When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen he grabbed a cardboard box bound for the incinerator and tried not to look at the words dancing up at him as he shovelled the pages of poetry inside. Descriptions of earth shattering love like that which drove Bruce to kiss an unconscious Clark in the medical bay. Illustrations of pure beautiful young adoration like the kind that prompted Kon to pick and give Tim a pear despite everything that was going on around them. Lyrical phrases for childish togetherness like experienced by Damian and the boy with the orange hair.

 

There were no poems for lovers like Jason and him. No poems for liars, for leavers, for failures.

 

No poems for people who hurt each other the way Jason and he did.

 

“ _F-fuck_ ,” he horsed. “Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_.” He heaved up the box into his arms and made his way across the cave to the incinerator. His head was swimming with the thoughts he’d been trying to banish since Jason struck him across the cheek and told him never to leave him again. Since he’d run face first into the ugly understanding that, while Jason was failing to give him romance, he was failing Jason in equal if not greater measure.

 

Of course Jason wasn’t giving him rings and romance. Of course Jason wasn’t a part of the wedding. To him it wasn’t a celebration of love. It wasn’t something fun and beautiful they could create and experience. It was a method to cement their hands together. To lock in their relationship – for better or for worse – like an answer on a game show.

 

He hadn’t proposed because he wanted to get married and contrary to what Dick had first believed he hadn’t proposed because he wanted to be married either.

 

He proposed because he wanted a promise from him that he wouldn’t leave.

 

How could he have failed the man he loved so much that he lived not in love but in constant fear that he would leave?

 

He rounded the corner to the incinerator and stopped as some familiar scents wafted towards him.

 

Alfred and Ma Kent were nearby. For an irrational moment he thought they were there to help him burn the poetry. Why else would anyone other than Tim and Kon come down into the back of the cave? It was dark, bad smelling, but there were no security cameras or casually roaming pack mates. The young couple tended to sneak back here when they thought no one was looking to make out in private.

 

They hadn’t been the first to do so. Dick had taken Barbara back here when he was still trying to pretend he liked betas and it was close to the massive steel door that guarded Bruce’s nest. The place the man retreated to with Clark when in heat.

 

Why would Alfred and Ma Kent come down here? Why would they—? Realisation struck as he saw the shadows moving together in the corner. Close and quiet. He quickly ducked back out of sight before they spotted him and nearly dropped the box as he stifled his gasp behind the flat of his palm. That gasp turned into the first earnest smile he’d felt cross his lips in what felt like a long time.

 

_Oh Alfred, you randy old…_

 

The smile was short lived as he looked down at the poetry still staring up at him. Sweet, epic, and earthshattering. Like the young alpha and omega who play like puppies in the corridors and like the old betas who found something – no matter how small a something – in amongst the wreckage.

 

Hardships brought people who were meant to be together together. It ripped apart people who weren’t.

 

_Oh no. I am breaking up with him. I’m leaving him. I’m…_

 

He spun on his heel and hurried back into the main body of the cave. There he dropped the box of poetry back on the evidence table, furiously tried to wrangle his breathing back into his control, and walked in a swift stiff limp up the stairs back into the manor. Once upstairs he found an empty room, moved into the corner, and rested his forehead on the wall. He didn’t cry and for that he was grateful. He’d been crying too much recently and besides, he wasn’t sure he had the right to cry.

 

Failures didn’t have the right to cry.

 

Leavers didn’t have the right to cry.

 

_No. I can’t. I can’t leave him. I love him. I love him more than the fucking world. And he loves me. We love each other. Nothing else should matter. Nothing else. Please don’t let anything else matter. Don’t be that guy. Please…_

 

He tangled his fingers in his hair and pulled until his roots protested the tension with a harsh sting. Back when he first fell into Jason’s orbit he knew what was right and wrong. He knew then leaving had been the right choice. He needed to get away from Jason and Jason needed to know he couldn’t just treat him the way he did and not have any repercussions.

 

Now he wasn’t so sure.

 

Now he didn’t know what the right thing to do was.

 

All he knew was – no matter what he decided – Jason didn’t deserve the hurt it would bring.

 

The distant sound of the baby crying dragged him form the dark spiral of his thoughts. He was sure Bruce was already there trying to quell the small nameless creature but her voice was a reminder that there were more things that needed to be fixed. More things he could take care of while he hesitated at the fork in the road before him.

 

Tim had found and neutralised the poison that had crippled the pack omegas, Clark had closed the breach Talia had made in the cave’s defences, and Bruce had recalled all the batbots. But there was more to do. There _had_ to be more to do.

 

He pushed himself off the wall, limped to the nearest bathroom, and checked to make sure he didn’t look puffy or red around the eyes. Once he was confident in his composure and had practised a few smiles he set off in hunt of anything else that needed fixing. Perhaps Jason and Conner had broken something in their fight that needed to be fixed, perhaps Tim actually did need to talk about why he hadn’t been eating, or maybe he could Google what kinds of food equalled healthy breast milk. What if Damian needed help with his catch up homework? Or Clark and Bruce wanted more name suggestions? Or maybe Clark just needed help coming to terms with Bruce’s hysterectomy. The man had been very quiet throughout the whole procedure and had literally hovered uncertainly in the corner when they all came back to the manor.

 

Good. Yes. That sounded like a situation that needed a beta. And – assuming Clark’s usual beta, Ma Kent, was distracted – he would be able to slot into the role.

 

He set off towards where he’d last seen the alien, turned around when he thought he caught a whiff of his scent going to other direction, and drew to a sudden stop as he inhaled the scent again and realised he’d made a mistake.

 

Alpha. Alpha but not alien.

 

He turned, caught on invisible puppet strings, and pushed open the large oak door beside him. It creaked as it swung open revealing the sitting room he had sucked Jason off the day he brought home Tim’s rings. It was exactly as it had been that day. Large, a little dusty above Alfred’s reach, and centred around a low lying fireplace. A fire burnt behind the grate and Jason sat in the chair facing it.

 

The alpha had already seen him. Gaze black beneath the dark curl of his hair.

 

“I’m sorry,” Dick retreated a step. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

 

“Yes you did,” the man said. “I heard you stop outside.”

 

That silenced him. The empty air was as good as a confession.

 

Jason stood and started toward him.

 

Dick threw up his hands and retreated. “I-I was looking for Clark. I didn’t mean to come in here.”

 

The alpha reached him, wrapped a hand around his wrist, and pulled him into the room. “No you weren’t.”

 

Dick shook under the man’s grasp.

 

He wasn’t holding him firmly. No. If anything the grip was uncharacteristically gentle. But the contact made his flesh tingle with a sensation that he felt like he should be able to name but couldn’t. Like fear but not. Like desire but not.

 

Like desperation but…

 

He lurched forward and crushed his lips against Jason’s. The alpha didn’t see the kiss coming and staggered back to thump against the wall in an impact that was sure to hurt his still healing ribs. All the same his response was immediate and feverish with need. An open mouthed connection that was as much panting in each other’s scent as it was actually kissing.

 

 _Jason. Oh fuck. Jason. Oh God…_ He shivered as the man’s came up to cup his cheek and clasp the back of his neck. Not where Jason’s hands usually strayed when they kissed. Nowhere close. _Don’t think. Don’t you dare think about anything right now. Just feel. Just…_

 

Dick reached down to restlessly grope at the alpha’s jeans.

 

Jason froze as Dick popped open the button of his fly. When he tried to pull the zipper down Jason danced them around and pinned him against the wall. Hard.

 

“What is this?” He snarled.

 

“J-Jason just…” he tried to kiss him again.

 

The man pulled his face back. “What the fuck is this?!”

 

“Nothing…”

 

“Nothing? That’s what this is to you? Nothing?!”

 

Dick stared at him hopelessly. “No. Not that. Never that.”

 

“Then what is this?!”

 

“I… I just thought we could…”

 

“This is a goodbye fuck, isn’t it? You’re trying to fuck me goodbye.”

 

“No. No I…”

 

“Tell me you’re not leaving! Tell me that.”

 

Dick opened his mouth. Closed it.

 

And God, he felt like a monster. Like the worst kind of villain. Like he belonged in the deepest pit in Arkham where he couldn’t hurt anyone else ever again. But he couldn’t lie to Jason. He couldn’t tell him he was okay – that they were okay – when they weren’t.

 

He couldn’t promise he wouldn’t leave when he didn’t know if it were a lie or not.

 

The alpha’s face twisted in pain and he pushed himself back away from him. “Don’t touch me,” he husked.

 

“Wait,” he reached out to grab Jason’s arm.

 

The alpha pushed him away. “Go on. Fuck off. Fuck off to Chicago.”

 

“Chicago? No, Jason I just wanted to…”

 

“I know what you wanted to do.”

 

“It’s not like…”

 

“I’m not going to fuck you goodbye!”

 

He felt his hands ball into fists. “You think I like this? You think I like being the one that makes the hard choices? I’m trying to do the right thing here!”

 

“And the right thing is leaving?!”

 

“I don’t know! I don’t know what the fuck is right! I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

 

Jason stopped. Turn his face slowly to look at him. To study him. “You… haven’t decided?”

 

A swift rap of knuckles across the door.

 

They looked up.

 

Clark didn’t look like Clark. He looked like Superman before a fight. Features stiff, shoulders square, and brow lowered.

 

Quietly. “You’d be amazed how far sound travels in this huge house.” A pointed look. “We’d just got her to sleep.”

 

“Sorry,” Dick said quickly. “We’ll keep it down.”

 

“You better. I’ve got a grumpy baby on my hands but and if she stays that way you’re going to have a _very_ grumpy omega on yours.” He turned and left.

 

By the time Dick’s eyes slid back to Jason’s the man’s gaze was already locked onto him. “You haven’t decided?” He pitched the question again. Quietly.

 

Mutely Dick shook his head from side to side.

 

Jason slunk tentatively back towards him. A man approaching a skittish animal. “You could stay. You don’t have to go. We can figure this shit out.”

 

“Jay…”

 

“Stay with me. I love you. I love you so much.”

 

Dick hated that he still loved hearing those words. Still wanted to keep hearing them for the rest of his life. Still wanted nothing more than to respond to them and for that to be enough. Maybe they could be. Maybe if he…

 

“I’m sorry about the rings,” the alpha went on, sensing his weakness. “I’m sorry about Ubu. I’m…” It was the wrong thing for him to say.

 

“Stop,” Dick held up his hand. “Just stop. That’s not what this is about. How can you still think that’s what this is about?”

 

“But…”

 

“I was an arse about the rings and Ubu…” The memories of the assassin clumped in the front of his brain, choking off the rest of his sentence.

 

The bone rattling fear as he lay on his back, in chains, crudely mimicking Jason in an attempt to save his life. The hours shivering in the darkness as he waited for Talia knowing all the while that Ubu was outside, obviously attracted to him, and liable to change his mind and kill him at any moment. The drained dread as he realised during his last sword fight with the man that he wasn’t going to win.

 

He didn’t know how long he would have lasted against Ubu but he was sure, if Jason hadn’t come in and killed the assassin, he would be headless right now.

 

Jason had killed Ubu to save him. Dick was under no illusions of that. He wouldn’t have attacked Ubu if not to save him. And, the moment Ubu had Jason in that neck breaking headlock, Dick had without a moment of hesitation decided to kill Ubu to save Jason. Jason had beaten him to it but he’d been there, his sword was raised, and the decision had been made without him ever stopping to actually decide.

 

He would have killed Ubu for Jason. He would have killed Talia for Damian.

 

How much of the world would he murder for those he loved?

 

The answer floated stark and terrifying at the back of his brain.

 

_All of it._

 

“It’s not Ubu,” he croaked. How could it be? How could he be angry at Jason for something he himself had been about to do? “And it’s not really about the rings.”

 

Jason seemed honestly confused. “But…”

 

“And I don’t need you to tell me you’re sorry,” he said. “I don’t need you to lie to try and make this all okay. I know you’re not sorry about the rings. I know you’re not sorry about Ubu. But you think you need to be to make me stay with you, so you tell me what you think I want to hear. Because you don’t trust me not to leave otherwise. And _that’s_ what this is about.” He sucked in a deep breath and looked down at his feet. He couldn’t look at the alpha for this part. He didn’t know if he should be able to look the alpha in the eye ever again after this part. “I’ve failed you, Jason. I’ve made you so scared of me leaving that you’re marrying me just to get me to promise to stay. You’re lying to me to try and make me happy. Can’t you see how fucked up that is? How unhealthy? And it’s not like this is the first majorly fucked up thing we’ve had since we got together. Not close.”

 

“Just because—”

 

“What if we’re just not good for each other, Jay?”

 

The question hung in the air like a death sentence.

 

Jason reached out and touched him. Not firmly, not aggressively, but with uncharacteristic uncertainty. Dick let those fingers slide gently across his cheek, over his jaw, and along his neck. Jason’s thumb touched his chin and guided his face around until he was once more looking up at the other man.

 

There was a storm in his eyes. Black and beautiful.

 

“What if I’m not good without you?”

 

Dick swallowed. “God, Jay.”

 

“I know you want to leave,” the alpha ploughed on. “I know that. But…”

 

“I-I don’t want to leave.” He promised. “I love you. I do. But, what if it’s the right thing to do? For both of us? What if we’re better apart?”

 

Jason didn’t say anything. His hand remained resting against Dick’s throat, thumb hooked up to touch his bottom lip. If anyone else was holding him like that it would be a threat. Not Jason. Dick knew the man was just feeling his pulse. Feeling his air moving in and out of his lungs. He didn’t know how he knew that but he did.

 

“Jesus, Jay. I can’t… You told me the only reason you wanted to get married was because you were afraid I was going to run away. You’re afraid I’m going to leave you. That’s the worst reason to get married. That’s not love. It’s fear. And I can’t... I… I want to be happy not afraid.”

 

“Will leaving make you happy?”

 

Softly. “No.” But what else could he do? He could see, now that the looked, where Jason’s fear of him leaving had stemmed from. He could see the roots of the issue and they ran deep. Deep into who he was and how he dealt with pain. Whenever things got too hard he left. He took a step back, found his centre, and rekindled himself. He removed himself from pain so he could be happy. That’s what he did. That’s what he did when Jason died. That’s what he did when Jason pushed him aside to confront Bruce. That’s what he did when Jason killed in front of him for the first time.

 

That’s what he’d done when his parents died and that’s what he would continue to do.

 

That’s how he survived.

 

“What will make you happy?” Jason asked.

 

“I…” he thought about it. Thought about all the answers he could give to that question. The romantic, the poetic, and the honest. The shitty stupid truth. “This is going to sound pathetic,” he croaked. “Really fucking shallow.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

He sucked in a ragged breath and looked up at him. “I want… I want _things_ , Jason. I want stupid things. Things like rings and flowers and a wedding that people will be jealous of and spontaneous dinner dates and kissing without fucking and pears and random stuff that I don’t even know about yet. And I don’t care if you don’t always get it right. I don’t care if you say you want bright yellow flowers at our wedding and I say ‘fuck no’. I just want you to try. Not to palm it off to Tim, or make me decide, or…” he brought up a hand to rub at his brow. “But romance is a want and stability is a need. I’m denying you what you need. It’s not okay to ask for wants. It’s… it’s not the same.”

 

“It’s okay,” Jason told him, seemingly happier now that they were discussing something concrete. Real.

 

“No it’s not okay,” Dick barely held himself back from snapping. “It’s petty. It’s low. It’s…”

 

Again. “It’s okay.”

 

“Not it’s not! I don’t want to be the one that wants. I don’t want to be the bad guy. I don’t want you to do these things because you think you have to, because you’re scared I’ll leave if you won’t. I couldn’t live with myself if I was that person.”

 

“I can give you th—”

 

“No, didn’t you hear what I just said? I don’t want you to do it because you think I’ll leave if you don’t. I want it naturally. I want you to want. I want… and I know you can’t do that…”

 

“I can!”

 

“No. No you don’t get it.”

 

“Why are you fighting this?” Jason snarled. “You tell me you love me but you’re trying to justify leaving. You tell me you want me to try but you’re not even letting me try.”

 

Wearily. “We’re not fighting Jay.”

 

“Yes we are! You’re my life, Dick. I’m fighting for my fucking life here.”

 

Dick felt his heart lurch in his chest. There was so much wrong with that statement. So _so_ much. But it was also one of the most gut wrenchingly beautiful things that had ever crossed the man’s lips.

 

“Why’d you have to say something like that?” he whispered. “Why’d you have to go and…”

 

“So don’t you try to tell me you’re leaving me for me,” Jason pushed on. “Because that’s where this is going isn’t it? You’re telling me my needs and how you’re failing them. Well, fuck you. I know me and you leaving fucking kills me.”

 

“God, Jay. Why do you have to say things like that?”

 

The door swung open and Bruce swooped in. Cheeks white and eyes shining a stark petrifying blue.

 

“Bruce. I’m sorry. We’ll be q— _ow!_ ”

 

Without a word the man grabbed them both by the back of their necks and marched them out of the room, along the corridor, and out a backdoor. The outside air was biting and the shock of it alone left Dick shivering. It would snow tonight, he realised. The still chill called for nothing less.

 

“I’m sorry Bruce. We deserved that.”

 

The omega sent him a look filled with a swirl of different emotions. “You deserve a lot more.”

 

“Yeah. I know. I…”

 

“You deserve to be happy.” A single simple statement, spoken softly rather than with the gravelly bite Bruce usually underlaid his insults with, and made as he retreated carefully back into the manor.

 

Dick blinked. “Bru—?”

 

The door closed with a soft click. Not a lock.

 

“ _Fucker_ ,” Jason snarled and stalked away from the door to slump down on the grass. It was the spot he always used to occupy before they were dating. That spot on the lawn that would smell like Jason for an hour after the man lay there. "He doesn't bond with us and then he thinks he can treat us like his fucking pups. No. F-fuck you Bruce. You've chosen your pups."

 

Dick approached slowly.

 

“He’s always hated us being together,” the alpha rasped. “He’s always thought you were too good for me. The Golden Boy and the mistake. He probably thinks I’ve corrupted you. He’s probably fucking thrilled that we’re breaking up. He always thought we would. Right again, arsehole. Right again.”

 

Dick didn’t bother telling Jason that he thought he was wrong. He thought Bruce was talking to both of them. The pan on the man’s gaze when he’d uttered the words had suggested it as was the positioning of the statement after his use of the word ‘we’. Jason thought Bruce was telling Dick to leave him. Dick wasn’t so sure. Perhaps, Bruce meant what he said literally. Perhaps he did just want them to be happy.

 

“What does it mean?” Jason asked, voice haggard. “Not being good for each other. What does that actually mean?”

 

Dick sat down beside him. “We’re not working a way a couple should.”

 

“How should a couple work?”

 

“I… I don’t know…”

 

The alpha’s hands shot up, seized his face, and directed it towards him. “Then stay.”

 

Dick stared. Shocked by the sudden, frantic, plea. So different from Jason’s attempts to persuade him earlier.

 

“Please,” Jason rasped. “Please just…” the alpha leant in and kissed him. It wasn’t the kind of kiss Dick was expecting. It wasn’t the kind of kiss he usually received from Jason after or during a fight. It was soft, desperate, and dry. An ugly kiss that thrummed through him like an electric shock.

 

Dick felt himself surrendering, felt his own lips part, and his hands float up to hover uncertainly either side of Jason’s head.

 

He wanted this. He wanted Jason. He wanted to seize him, kiss him, and spend the rest of his life on the other side of his bed. But he also didn’t know how much more of this he could take. Their relationship had never been easy. No matter what they did it just got harder. No matter what it always cycled back to the same place. Hurt, uncertainty, and cruel unrelenting need.

 

Love they called it. But Dick wasn’t sure it was love. Love wasn’t this deep or this strong or this painful. The feeling that stuck like a thorn in his heart whenever Jason kissed him had no right to have the same name as the happy platonic butterflies he felt when around Barbara or the greedy joy he used to take from his relationship with Kory. It wasn’t even truly comparable anymore to the feelings he harboured for the rest of the pack. He loved Bruce, he loved Damian, and loved Alfred.

 

Jason he was drawn to. A moth to the flame.

 

He knew this man would destroy him. He knew he would destroy Jason in turn. That was the flavour of their love. They didn’t complete each other. They broke down and built each other up. Caught in an endless vicious cycle that evolved but never truly changed. The question was could he step out of this storm? Could he live without it? Could he survive a lifetime in it?

 

Was he brave enough to try?

 

Jason broke the kiss but didn’t lean back or release Dick’s face. Clutched him like he was afraid he was going to disappear.

 

Dick sat. Still and awkward. Halfway to an embrace he couldn’t decide to commit to.

 

“Stay,” Jason whispered. “Just stay.”

 

In that moment it was so hard to remember why he was hesitating. Why was he standing on the edge and not just kissing his man with all the passion he could muster.

 

Maybe everything could be as simple as Jason believed it to be. Maybe he could just stay, marry him, and that would be the end of all their problems. Maybe all they needed to do was to keep trying. Maybe one day all the pieces would fall into place and they could have the earnest open kind of relationship he saw between Bruce and Clark. Between Tim and Conner.

 

But as much as he wanted to believe that he couldn’t. No matter what the other man said he knew they would never be perfect. They would never be the relationship he’d been raised to believe was waiting around the corner from him. The kind people wrote poetry about.

 

There was imperfection. There was pain. And no matter what they did that wasn’t going to go away. But perhaps that was what all relationships were like behind closed doors. Perhaps they would never be perfect. Perhaps that was okay. As long as they loved each other. As long as they kept trying. Kept fighting. Kept forgiving.

 

Perhaps it didn’t matter that they weren’t right for each other.

 

Perhaps being right for each other didn’t matter as much as being there for each other. The way they were there for each other – against all odds and against all moral code – when Ubu attacked.

 

He buried his face in Jason’s shoulder and inhaled the scent of leather, smoke, and alpha. The scent of his man. The man who had hurt him and who he had hurt in turn. The man who had killed for him and who he would kill for. The man who was fighting for him like his life depended on it.

 

He made his decision.

 

“I’m going to leave—”

 

The man groaned and clutched him almost painfully tight to him. A python’s embrace.

 

“No, no, listen to me,” Dick pulled his head up and pressed his brow against Jason’s. “I’m going to leave _for a while_.”

 

The alpha stilled.

 

“I’m leaving but I’ll be back.”

 

“Why?” He rasped.

 

“Because sometimes I need to breathe,” he told him earnestly. “Sometimes I need to just get away for a few days – even if it’s just emotionally away – and breathe. Like right now. My heads all fucked and I just need to… reboot. But that doesn’t mean I’m gone. I’m here. I’m yours. I… I wish I was as strong as you. I wish I could just fight harder and…”

 

“You’ll be back?” Jason interrupted.

 

“Always,” he whispered and in an instant knew it was the truth. “Always…”

 

He wasn’t right for Jason. Jason wasn’t right for him. They weren’t good for each other. But he loved him and he knew no matter what he did he wasn’t going to be able to wash away that feeling. He wasn’t going to be able to be happy anywhere but beside Jason Todd. No matter what, he was coming back for this man.

 

"Always."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usually when I write I have two word pages open. One for the chapter itself and one to drop all the extra paragraphs, snippets, and ideas that I write, take out, and put back in (or not put back in) as I go. By the time I finished this chapter the 'extra' page was almost twenty thousand words long.
> 
> I - quite literally - wrote this chapter five times in five very different ways. I really _really_ hope it pays off. These two are so special to me and I really want to do them and their struggles justice. Thanks so much for waiting so patiently for me to clock back around to them and I really hope you like the chapter.
> 
> On another note, while I was doing some sole searching for this chapter I posted a few short drabbles on Tumblr. If you're interested in reading more of my writing you can check them out [here](http://evilpixiea.tumblr.com/tagged/my+writing).


	37. Chapter 37

Clark swooped between two of the mutant invaders, gathered them up in his arms, and slammed them into the pavement. The force was enough to rattle claw tipped limbs and break off one’s left horn but not to knock them unconscious. Long spiny tails flailed against his chest, lizard like snouts peeled back from mangled teeth, and one let out a gargled hiss as its talons raked uselessly against his forearm.

 

_“Ssssssssssuuupppeeerrr…”_

 

The back of his neck prickled at the sound. So similar to the strangled pitching voices of the man-bats as they’d swarmed and killed him in the ruined remains of Gotham Museum. Too close to the blackness, emptiness, and nothingness of his state like death.

 

He lifted them up and slammed them back down into the sidewalk. Hard enough to crack the cement, break small bones, and stun the snarling creatures.

 

“Enough,” he rasped and pushed down the larger of the two when it tried to stand. “ _Enough_. It’s over. It’s _done_.”

 

“Sssuupppeeerr…” the thing continued to drool out the word. “SSssuupp…”

 

His eyes drew to the pointed tips of its pronged teeth that inhibited the creature’s tongue. Uneven and odd as they splayed out from the gummy ridges of the mutant’s palate.

 

He thought about four blades. The first had threatened to kill him. The sword held by the man-bat with the amulet in the remains of Gotham Museum. The second was longer, smoother, and had fitted neatly between Damian’s ribs. The third had removed the head of the second’s wielder. Talia’s brutally cold removal of her second son.

 

The forth was the smallest. A dagger. Small, discreet, and against Bruce’s throat.

 

“Mmmmaaannnn….”

 

He punched the monster in the bloody maw of its mouth, hard enough to knock out teeth and send the thing slumping unconscious back onto the cement sidewalk. Harder than was probably necessary. Harder than he’d hit in a while.

 

For a moment he stood alone with his fist over the two defeated bodies. Around him the rest of the mutant army spotted the simple suburban street side. One in a hedge, another sitting on a flattened satellite dish, and a number more already trussed up and ready for pick up by local authorities.

 

 _“Whhooo_ hoo!” An emerald comet corkscrewed overhead amid a flourish of green fireworks. “Supes is _back_ baby! Big Blue in the house! Yeah!” Along the ground a red streak zigzagged in messy tandem. Tying up the last of the invaders, zipping wounded bystanders to hospital, and returning to prop up flattened mail boxes in a blur of motion.

 

Clark tapped his ear piece. “Diana? Is that the last of them?”

 

 _“I have a few more,”_ the alpha growled over the speaker. _“Don’t you **dare** try to help. They’re **mine**.”_

 

He knew better than to protest and stayed where he was as Hal swooped low for a second fly over. “Oh man! Check us out, a monster invasion stopped and it’s not even lunch break. I love it!” The man dipped down to land beside him and slung an arm across his shoulder. “Man, I’m so glad you’re not MIA anymore. This gig is a _lot_ harder without you. I was starting to think we might be in trouble until I heard that God beautiful sonic boom. Better than an F-16. Well…” he wrinkled his nose, “almost.”

 

“It’s good to see that you’re okay,” Barry said as he tied the last two mutants up and came to a stop in front of him. A blur of red materialising into the light limbed beta. “We looked for you. Everywhere. I even ran into Gotham a couple of times – which I know your old man megs doesn’t like much – but with all the robots flying around I figured they would have found you. They… I should have kept looking.”

 

“Old man megs?” Hal cocked an eyebrow. “As in old man o- _meg-_ a? Jeez, Barry. Do you have to be _so_ 1940? Is Iris your old gal? Am I your jolly old chum? You know in the big city it’s pronounced oh- _may_ -ga now days. That’s how the millennials say it.”

 

“I have it under good authority that omega’s will be called ‘gagas’ in the future. I think I’ll stick with old fashioned, thanks.”

 

“Gagas?” Hal puckered his lips. “Like… the end of the word? Are betas tatas? Are alphas fafas or hahas?”

 

“Mate,” Barry corrected without looking at the other beta. “Your _mate_ doesn’t like people coming into Gotham. I shouldn’t have listened. I should have kept searching. I’m sorry.”

 

“No. I understand.” Clark held up a hand, not wishing to talk about his disappearance, Talia, or anything else in that vein. “Justice League isn’t exactly prepped for dealing with people like Leviathan.”

 

“You can say that again.” The speedster continued, completely missing his reluctance to discuss the issue further. “I was playing run around with Captain Cold – punchlines and punitive property damage kind of thing – and I just kept hearing about kids going missing, omegas getting poisoned, and…”

 

“It’s fine. It’s fine.”

 

“I wanted to help.” Barry somehow managed to look guilty through his mask. “But what could I do? I looked for you and helped rebuild Oklahoma but… If they found out your secret identities and attacked you where you lived then it would be a piece of cake for them to figure out who I am. And with Iris and the twins on the way…”

 

“It’s okay,” Clark tried again to shut down the conversation. “There was nothing you could have done. It’s over now.” _It’s over._

 

“And the good guys won,” Hal jumped in. “No one died. Not even the gagas. That’s what I call a happy ending, eh big guy?”

 

“Yeah…” Clark thought of Damian’s twin’s body falling down three feet away from his head. Beheaded by his mother for not quietly accepting her disregard of him. He thought of Damian himself gasping for breath around a rotting lung. A wound he sustained in front of Clark’s eyes. He thought about Bruce being cut open and a piece of him – the small incredible piece that had given them a daughter – taken. The organ all but destroyed when a placenta with tougher-than-human cells was violently ripped away from the very-human host. None of it was his fault but all of it was his failure. The people he should have been able to protect. “Happy…”

 

“I just don’t know how your old-mate does it going against baddies like that,” Barry pushed on. “I mean, Leviathan was just…”

 

“Hey,” Hal cut him off. “Stop talking about it. Can’t you see the big guy’s turning a little green? Or am I reflecting off you? Or maybe he’s just a little tired because – hey hey – Twitter told me _someone’s_ had a baby.” The man playfully punched him in the arm and grinned from behind his bulky green mask. “What’s it feel like being a dad? What’s his name?”

 

“She’s a girl,” Clark muttered.

 

The Green Lantern seemed thrown by this. “Girl? But in the photos he was wearing blue.”

 

“Bruce likes blue.”

 

“But boys wear blue,” the man protested.

 

Again. “Bruce likes blue. And we haven’t decided on a name.”

 

“How long can a baby not have a name?” Barry asked, a touch of disapproval threatening on the edge of his tone.

 

“Technically, sixty days,” Clark answered a little more forcefully than he intended.

 

“And that’s cool,” Hal said patting his arm. “Getting to know him-eh-her before you make a choice. That’s fine.” A big grin. “I’m sure you’re going to be a super dad Superdad.”

 

He couldn’t help but snort at that. But there was a smile under the sound. Damn, but no matter how annoying Bruce found Hal he was a pretty damn good beta. He didn’t always say the right thing but he knew how to save himself when he’d miss-stepped and was the king of dispelling tension… when he wanted too. When Hal wanted to cause trouble – like in the early days when he thought Bruce was insulting him by telling him he wasn’t as strong as Clark – he could pull everyone’s strings the wrong way just as easily.

 

Barry on the other hand was a beta pack leader and tended to unconsciously style himself a little like an alpha. More direct, more confrontational, but still under it all the simply nice guy he’d been when they first met. He cared, wanted to make absolute sure everyone was okay, and – Clark had to admit – sometimes he kind of liked the more old fashioned vibe the man put out.

 

“Ha!” Diana flew over one of the nearby houses brandishing what looked like a crown of melted rivets. “Their leader king is defeated! Victory is ours!”

 

“Their leader, Diana?” He protested. “You should have let me help.”

 

The woman snorted as she landed on the pavement. “I didn’t need your help. You needed to gossip with these school boys.”

 

“Girls,” Hal said.

 

Diana lifted an eyebrow.

 

“It’s the saying,” the Green Lantern explained. “Gossiping like school _girls_.”

 

“I wasn’t using a saying.”

 

Beat. “Oh.”

 

“They’ve been talking about you and Bruce for days now,” she told Clark. “Them and all the others. I thought I would give them a chance to interrogate.”

 

“They haven’t really interrog—”

 

“When can we meet her?” Barry asked.

 

“Is the kid gig as hard as everyone says?” Hal followed up.

 

“How is Bruce? Everything’s good with him right? The poison didn’t do anything long term did it?”

 

“Are there any plans for kid number two? Or, um, kid number… five? Six? Wait, no, seven?”

 

“You made sure you cleaned all the poison out of the house, right?”

 

“Is Br—your _gaga_ coming back to work?” Hal asked, shooting Barry a sideways look.

 

The speedster ignored him and fixed Clark with an earnest apologetic gaze. “And I get that you don’t want to talk about it but – I got to know – is Leviathan really gone? For good?”

 

“I…” Clark swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah it’s all good.” A pause. “I should actually, you know, get back there.”

 

“Hey, no. Bruce will understand,” Hal held out his hands. “We just saved the day. We always hang out for a little while after, right? And there is such a small gang of us this time. It’ll be no fun without you.”

 

“No,” Clark retreated a step. “No, sorry. I really should get home.”

 

“Let him go Hal,” Barry nudged him. “Just because you’re living the fun family free life doesn’t mean we all are.”

 

“You’re telling me?! You’ve got the twins next month, Big Blue’s got the little superbat now, and you,” he turned to Diana, “have knocked up my best pilot friend. _Again_. Who have I got left to party with?” The man heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’ve got to go out there and find me a tata. A barely legal, party crazy, boy – so there is no chance of babies – tata.”

 

“Can we seriously not make this gaga tata thing a thing?” Barry asked.

 

“You’re the one that told me it’s what the cool hip future kids are saying.”

 

“I didn’t. I just said…”

 

Clark left them to their debate and slunk back ready to take off and swing back home towards Wayne Manor. Diana reached out and stopped him.

 

“Kal,” a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

 

He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah I’m just…” he considered lying. Settled with an abridged version of the truth. “…getting over everything that’s happened.” All his missteps. All his failures that nearly destroyed his biological and adopted family. “Leviathan hit us pretty bad.”

 

She nodded sagely and lent forward to kiss him on each cheek. It was strange in the extreme for alphas to treat each other that way but he took comfort in the close friendly feel of the act. A tradition wholly Amazonian and entirely appreciated.

 

“Call when you’re ready to spend time with us. Bruce too. Don’t lose yourself in the baby. Give yourself some space away when you need it.” A small smile. “And congratulations. I’m sure she’s beautiful. With dads like hers I can’t imagine how she couldn’t be.”

 

Clark smiled. It was the most earnest expression he’d worn since he landed in the small town; evacuated and flooded with the mutant army. “Yeah. She’s…” his thoughts and awareness stretched across the country to the manor and his smile slipped. He sighed. “…crying again.”

 

A sympathetic smile. “You better go.”

 

He nodded, waved at the two arguing betas, and flew up into the air. Once he was high enough he veered east toward Gotham.

 

It took him seconds to reach it.

 

Unlike the west coast the east coast was wading through the last of winter’s weather. Bruce’s city seemed to be at the epicentre of it. Twisted spires were swallowed by murky cloud, boats slugged through an icy Gotham river, and snow blustered on smoky air. Gritty, grey, and only settling in the nooks and crannies of the city.

 

Still, it was more snow than the citizens of Gotham were used to and a few bundled kids stood on the street side rolling the polluted sludge into deformed snowmen. Richer and more enterprising families had driven out toward The Palisades and a few were creating snow angels in the cleaner, whiter, and more covering snow gathered around the edges of Wayne Estate.

 

Clark swooped into the cloud cover to avoid being seen, ducked around the back of the massive mansion, and shook the ice off his cheeks as he came in the kitchen door.

 

Three and half seconds later he was in the west wing master bedroom.

 

Bruce stood by the window and clutched a sobbing baby hopelessly to his chest. His cheeks were hollow, eyes shadowed, and facial hair in need of a trim if not a shave.

 

His scent was also taunt and unhappy. Frightened.

 

Clark swallowed down the pang of irrational alpha instinct that told him to hunt down and chase off whatever had disturbed his mate. It wouldn’t help. Bruce had never been impressed by that side of the alpha psyche and he had a feeling this wasn’t the kind of thing heat vision could solve.

 

Bruce didn’t usually give off these kind of pheromones and the smell was jarring and unfamiliar. Throughout the Leviathan attack, even when in danger, the man had been in control of himself. Planning, strategizing, leading. It was only here, alone in a cold room with a screaming baby, that some of his walls were starting to wear thin.

 

“Bruce?”

 

The omega jerked, turned around, and stared at him. A storm of emotions flickered across his face before he settled on one. Anger. “Where the hell were you?”

 

“I told…”

 

“You told me you’d be gone for half an hour!” The man yelled. “That was fifty two minutes!”

 

The baby wailed loudly. The patch of Bruce’s shirt against her eyes was wet. Her scent – small and almost smothered by Bruce’s crushing omega aroma – was just as stressed as her bearer’s.

 

“I’m sorry,” he approached. “It was… I’m sorry.”

 

“Fifty two minutes is an hour, Clark! An hour to deal with less than a hundred non-powered mutants.”

 

“My maths was wrong,” he said. “I thought there were less mutants and more heroes than there were.”

 

The omega’s eyes narrowed. “How many more mutants?”

 

“A few hundred.”

 

“How many League Members?”

 

“Only me, Hal, Barry, and Diana.”

 

“ _Idiots_ ,” Bruce snarled. “Can’t they even organise a decent response team now? A decent data analysis? You’re not going back out there with the League until they can properly evaluate a threat and send the appropriate number of heroes. Whatever happened to my point system?”

 

“Technically we used it,” Clark said. “I’m nine points. Diana’s eight. Hal and Barry are seven. That’s over thirty points for a level three thr—”

 

“Don’t start,” Bruce snapped. “I don’t want to hear it. You were gone and she just…” he looked down at the girl and all the anger melted out of his stance. Its departure as sudden as its arrival. “She… she just started crying, Clark. Right after you left. I can’t stop her. I tried everything. She doesn’t want to feed, or sleep, or… a-and I can’t find Alfred or Martha. I-I tried standing in sunlight but it makes no difference and you were gone so you couldn’t watch her cells to make sure she wasn’t burning and… you were…”

 

“It’s okay,” he said and moved forward to wrap them both in a loose embrace. “Nothing bad happened. Babies just cry sometimes. It’s okay.” He didn’t add that Bruce’s scent – interlaced with anxious pheromones – probably wasn’t helping. And she wasn’t helping Bruce. They were probably stressing each other out just knowing each other was stressed.

 

Clark thought about what Diana had said and slipped a hand between his mate and the infant he carried.

 

“Here. Let me hold her for a sec. You can sit down.”

 

The man’s brow pleated. He still wasn’t yet comfortable holding her and the awkward lock of his arms suggested he was even less certain about the notion of passing her to another person.

 

“It’s okay. She’s fine. I’ve got her.”

 

“You’ve got her?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You sure?”

 

He looked the man dead in the eyes. “I swear to you, Bruce. I’m not going to drop her.”

 

The omega looked at him, analysed him like he would a criminal in an interrogation, and slowly loosened his grip. A tentative untangling of limbs.

 

Once she was well and truly in Clark’s arms he brought her up to his shoulder – hopefully blocking out Bruce’s scent with his own – and gently bounced her. “Hey, it’s okay. Clouds make me sad too. It’s okay. The snow’s nice though isn’t it? Nice and pretty.” She kept crying. “No? You don’t like it? I like it. One day I’m going to take you to my ice castle. You’ll like it there. The sky is thin there. Lots of sun.”

 

Bruce watched their interaction with floating hands before retreating to sit on the edge of the bed. He ran his hands through his hair and tipped his head toward his knees. “Fu-I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

 

“It’s okay. It’s the first time I’ve been out as Superman since I disappeared. I understand.”

 

“No it…” the man closed his eyes. Didn’t finish his sentence.

 

Clark didn’t ask him too. He just kept cooing and bouncing their daughter. She, for her part, kept crying. It took about ten minutes for her to finally settle down and – with one last hiccupping sob – relent. The quiet afterwards was astronomically loud.

 

Bruce looked up between his fingers and studied the subdued baby. Softly. “You’re better with her than I am.”

 

“You’ll get the hang of it,” he replied. “You did most of the work. I just took care of the last few minutes.”

 

“I thought this part would come instinctually,” the man admitted, still gazing at the girl. “I thought I would just – because my omega instincts were always really strong when I was boy…”

 

“I don’t think anyone can instinct their way through parenthood.”

 

“Yes but…” Bruce closed his eyes. “I… I’m not… when she was inside me I knew what she wanted and… I knew her. She was my pup. She woke me up in the mornings, just like you. I could talk to her. I _did_ talk to her. Now I’m scared every time I hold her I’m going to hurt her. Now I keep thinking, because my breasts developed so late, there might be something wrong with my milk. Now I look at her and I don’t know her name. I thought when I first saw her I would know her name. I thought I would see her face, smell her scent, and be able to pick one from the shortlist we had.”

 

Quietly. “She’s still your pup, Bruce.”

 

“I know. I’m not unhappy I… she’s just not what I expected, Clark. She’s so beautiful. She smells so beautiful. But she’s also so real. So _here_. A-and in such a different way that she was here before.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“I…” Bruce considered his question. For a long time. “I was used to being pregnant,” he finally said. “That was my connection with her. I liked being pregnant. Then she came a few weeks early after all the attacks and I didn’t really have time to mentally…”

 

“Lie down.”

 

The omega’s gaze moved from her to him. “What?”

 

“Lie down,” he said again and approached.

 

“Why?”

 

“Trust me.”

 

Slowly Bruce lay back onto the body of the mattress. His legs still bent and feet planted on the floor but body horizontal. Silver blue eyes watched him suspiciously but made no move to stop him as Clark settled himself beside him and pulled up the man’s shirt.

 

Below the breasts Bruce’s body was still soft and pliant after his pregnancy. A patchwork of jagged pink stretchmarks, old lumpy scars, and oddly loose skin. Between his hips a short surgical red line was the only sign that spoke to the loss of his womb. The price he had paid for Clark’s petty inability to forgive the unintentional order the man had laid on his shoulders.

 

It seemed so unfair that their fight, and Clark’s abandonment of Bruce, had led to his mate losing something while he remained untouched. Free of even a single mark.

 

The only true pain he’d had to experience was witnessing the doctors take the ripped and ruined organ from his mate’s body.  A painful experience not just because he had to give up the errant and always unlikely dream of sharing a second pregnancy with Bruce but because he had to listen – curtesy of his super hearing – to the comments whispered by the staff behind closed doors.

 

_“I hate having to do this to omegas. Especially high levels. It’s such a shame to ruin them.”_

_“I wonder how long that bond mark is going to stay on his neck now.”_

 

_“Kind of funny how he used to pretend to be a beta. Now he’s got his wish.”_

_“He’s keeping his ovaries. He’ll still smell good. He’ll still **feel** good.”_

_“I’m not crying for Batman. He’s got seven billion dollars out of the deal.”_

_“This is why omegas should be bred young. First pup before twenty.”_

_“And he was so beautiful too…”_

Sometimes Clark hated the world.

 

Hated how, no matter what, there was someone whispering something ugly within earshot. Sometimes something the speaker didn’t even seem to know was wrong.

 

He dispelled the memory, tried not to recoil from the healing surgical scar, and settled the girl against his mate. Determined to carry out his plan.

 

Bruce stiffened and a hand wandered down to touch the pink bodied newborn. At the same time her fingers found one of his scars – a large knotted old thing just below his ribs– and lazily fisted it. The contact pushed a strange expression across the man’s face.

 

“Clark, what is this?”

 

“Hold on.”

 

Clark took off his cape and settled it over Bruce’s bottom half and all but the baby’s face. The bulge of her covered body resting right over his abdomen.

 

“There,” Clark said. “All pregnant again.”

 

“Clark…” The way Bruce said his name made it sound like it had twenty As in it. An exasperated sigh.

 

“No? Not feeling it?”

 

“I’m not pregnant, Clark. She’s sitting on me. It’s not the…” the man broke off suddenly and looked down at the infant on him in surprise.

 

“What? What’s wrong? She didn’t wet you did she?”

 

The omega shook his head. “No. She kicked me.”

 

Clark wasn’t sure how to take this news. “Did it hurt? We don’t know how strong she is or…”

 

“No,” Bruce’s mouth slipped into a small soft smile. “I know that kick.”

 

Clark watched as the man gently tucked the cape – his baby blanket – around her and folded his hand over her back. Still overly careful, still awkward, but also filled with the tentative unconditional love he had come to expect to see between his mate and his daughter. The kind of moment that had dominated in Bruce’s late pregnancy.

 

The scene also reminded him of her birth. Bruce had been on his back then too, the midwife had placed the girl on the man’s stomach, and in that instant Earth’s axis shifted. What was the centre of his world had become two. Then the pack had come, dubbed her Lemons, and he realised that the centre of his world hadn’t been just one thing for a while now.

 

Conner, Damian, Alfred, Ma, Dick, Tim, Jason… they might not be his pack but they were his family. Perfect for their imperfections.

 

With them, with Bruce, with their daughter, the memories of the last few weeks seemed a little more manageable. In the manor, with the people he loved, it was easier to forget and look beyond Leviathan. Easier to be whole. Easier to think about swords, death, and failure and not buckle under the weight of it.

 

He sighed, leant forward, and kissed the man on the brow. Then the cheek. Then the nose. Then the mouth.

 

“I never made our porno,” Bruce whispered as their lips parted.

 

Clark stopped, started, and snorted through a messy laugh. “Seriously Bruce? That’s what you’re thinking about? Now?”

 

“We’re talking about me being pregnant. Of course I’m going to think about it.”

 

“I’ll survive without it. Or, when you’re feeling up to it, we can make it.”

 

“I won’t be pregnant.”

 

“No,” he ceded. “But you do have these.” He reached across and ran his hands over the bulk of the man’s new breast.

 

The man shooed him away. “Not for you.”

 

“Oh come on. I haven’t played with breasts since I dated women.”

 

“Good. Then you’ll be used to not playing with them.”

 

He pouted.

 

Bruce sent him a look. “They hurt and they’re _not for you_.”

 

He deepened the pout.

 

The omega rolled his eyes, turned his face away, and tapped the side of his neck. “ _This_ is for you. I need a new bond mark.”

 

Clark’s mock sulk slipped. “You want me to bite you? Just like that?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But we usually…”

 

“I’m not exactly keen on sex right now, Clark. But our mark has almost faded right off and I hate not having it.”

 

“What about your side of the bond?” The question occurred to him. “That just feeds my bond. It doesn’t feed yours. You’ll go through bond withdrawal if we don’t have sex.”

 

“I’m an omega. I don’t need to feed my bond as much as you and I can feed it a little just by sleeping beside you.” A small smile. “Don’t worry. If I start to feel like I’m bond starving I’ll be sure to suck you off.”

 

“...thank you?” Clark wasn’t sure what the correct response to that was. “But you know I can’t just bite you out of the blue. I’ve got to be aroused and…” he looked at the baby wriggling on Bruce’s body. “I’m not really in the mood to get aroused right now either.” He didn’t want to disturb this strange beautiful scene he’d made.

 

The man frowned. “I can’t get back into shape until the surgery scar is…”

 

“No no no,” he waved his hands. “No, that’s not what I meant. I liked you pregnant, Bruce. I really don’t need a six pack to turn me on. I’m sure when you get around to giving me oral it’ll last two seconds and I’ll be able to give you a thousand bites.”

 

Bruce’s frown deepened. “Did you just tell me to hurry up and suck you off?”

 

“No. That isn’t remotely… this is coming out wrong. What I meant was you’re sexy, and amazing, and beautiful… and being around you and this family is the only thing that’s keeping me sane right now… But you’ve got a baby on you – _our_ baby – and sex is seriously the last thing on my mind. I could be bond starving and I wouldn’t even notice.”

 

Something strange passed across Bruce’s face. A sadness that dragged his gaze back down to the baby on him. “You’ll notice.”

 

“Except I won’t,” he said slowly. “Because we’re not going to bond starve. Because I’m going to bite you.”

 

Bruce didn’t say anything.

 

“Right?”

 

“The letter from the courts arrived today.”

 

“The…?” Clark froze. “They’re still charging you with that? It’s _your_ company. They’re _your_ robots.”

 

“They’re fifty one percent my robots, Clark. They’re also not registered vehicles, are not yet approved mobile weaponry, and caused a lot of public disturbance when they were looking for you, Damian, and Dick.” He carefully tugged the baby off his hip, pulled a rumbled piece of paper out of his pocket, and unfolded it against his chest. “I don’t think my company is pursuing the suit but the city is for disturbing the peace. Among other things.”

 

“Disturbing the peace?” Clark echoed in disbelief.

 

Bruce flipped the page he held over and read. “Citizen A stated ‘we felt as if we were under occupation’ and ‘no person – let alone a known lawbreaker and omega – should have that kind of power.’”

 

Clark felt his jaw set. “And they’re telling you the ravings of some omegaphobic idiot because…?”

 

“Because they’re right, Clark. I broke the law. I invaded air space. I damaged property.”

 

“I do that every day and people call me hero for it.”

 

Bruce’s lips quirked. A stiff sad smile. “Bruce Wayne’s not as popular as Superman.”

 

And if his identity was known he had little doubt – in the early days especially – he would have been held accountable for similar offenses. In his first year as Superman people praised him and loved him, while others threw bricks at him and told him to ‘go back where he came from’.

 

Sometimes it felt like one person’s hate could outweigh a hundred voices raised in support.

 

“Get your lawyers,” Clark said. “Pay whatever stupid fine they want.”

 

The man lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t want me to try and prove innocence?”

 

“You confessed didn’t you? That’s why you had the tracking anklet on. And I know you’re not going to blame Batman because then people will oppose Batman Inc.”

 

“Maybe it’s better that way.”

 

He stopped. Stared. “What? No. Don’t give up. You’ve worked so hard for Batman Inc. It’s a good thing. It’s saved people.”

 

“It’s what brought Leviathan down on our heads,” Bruce said.

 

“ _I’m_ what brought Leviathan down on our heads. Talia wanted to kill _me_.”

 

Bruce neither agreed nor challenged that statement.

 

“Don’t give up Batman Inc.,” he said softly. “That’s just letting her win. And people already know you’re ‘Batman’s’ mate now.”

 

“Which is dangerous,” he muttered. “Any one of my villains could come after us in an attempt to get to Batman.”

 

“But none of them will bring Kryptonite,” he said. “It’s better they think you’re Batman’s mate than Superman’s.” He reached out and took the court order from his mate’s hand. “And if they tell you to go to jail we’re faking your death.” Threw the page away across the room.

 

Bruce watched it arch through the air and then studied the spot where it had fallen.

 

“I’m not letting anyone take you or her away from each other. Especially not for trying to save your family. I don’t care what the law says, that’s not happening.” He refused to take this tentative new parent bond and destroy it. He refused to curb his mate’s bumpy new learning curve into the world of new parenthood. He refused to let Bruce slip out of and miss her early life. Not even for a moment.

 

Bruce leant across the stretch of mattress between them and kissed him. Lips, beard, and now-sweet omega all pressed up against his senses. “You’re good for me, Kent. You don’t even know.”

 

The girl, perhaps sensing the attention was elsewhere, let out a broken sob.

 

Bruce’s eyes slipped closed with a tortured sigh. He brought the baby from his belly up to his chest and paused when she immediately started nuzzling.

 

Clark watched in fascination as the man pulled his shirt the rest of the way up and off before trying to nurse her. It didn’t really work. She couldn’t seem to decide if she wanted milk or just wanted to make noise. But it was still one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen. Awkward, uncertain, but simply and wholly wonderful.


	38. Chapter 38

It happened during dinner one week and one day after Lemons was born. The pack was gathered tightly around the kitchen table, Clark was feeding the baby with a bottle of Bruce’s breast milk, and Damian was hacking at his roasted pork knuckle like he was trying to kill it.

 

Kon sat in the middle of it all quietly relishing feel of the congregation. It wasn’t perfect. Dick was missing, Clark and Grandma were somehow estranged from it, and the exhausted grief that had stemmed from Talia’s attack still hadn’t dissipated. But, despite that, there was something peaceful in the sense of togetherness. A quiet comfort that sat warm and full low in his belly.

 

The feeling was made stronger by the fact that, for the first time since first coming to visit the manor, he'd managed to sit beside Tim at the dinner table. The omega was picking at his food with quiet persistence. Eating only select bits and pieces of what was served up before him. As Kon watched he overturned his pork knuckle in an attempt to retrieve the last baby potato on his plate. It rolled free. A small wrinkled red skinned orb which the boy cut up and devoured with relish.

 

“Here,” Kon offered. “I have more potatoes. I’ll give you…”

 

A low growl stole his attention. He looked up, locked eyes with Jason, and then glanced away.

 

“I, eh, mean would you like some more potatoes?” He glanced at Bruce – asking permission – as he reached for the serving tray and brought it within Tim’s reach. "There's heaps. No one will mind if you take more."

 

Giving an omega food – especially from his own plate – was possessive alpha behaviour. Offering it was polite. Distinguishing between those two actions and deliberately performing the latter was an allowance he made for the older alpha. A way he could be with Tim and respect Jason at the same time. Because, if the nightmarish few days at the hospital taught him anything, it was that Jason did love Tim.

 

If Kon understood anything in the world, he understood loving Tim.

 

With that understanding he found he could look at the older alpha with a new pair of eyes. They weren't rivals. They weren't fighting for the same place in Tim's life. Tim and Jason had a bond but it was a close brotherly bond that filled a spectrum of space opposite to that of Kon's relationship with the young omega. Sometimes their two positions clashed. Sometimes he was pulling Tim one way and Jason was pulling him another. Sometimes that was inevitable. But most of the time it wasn't. 

 

They could coexist. And with that peace he could allow himself to give a little. Not just for Tim, not just because it was polite, but because of that love he knew Jason had for Tim. Because he knew the man would give his life to keep his family and his pack safe. Because when everything fell apart he'd followed Jason and...

 

“Conner.”

 

He froze as Bruce’s voice – reverberating with power – rung out across the table. Silencing the pack in an instant.

 

“Y-yeah?” He answered weakly. Aware of how loud he sounded in the suddenly very empty air.

 

“Come here.”

 

“Wh-?" He shot a nervous look at Tim already halfway through his new selection of potatoes. "I-I wasn’t giving him…”

 

Bruce. “Now.”

 

He jerked upright, scurried around the table’s edge, and came to a stop stiff, awkward, and to attention at the omega’s side. The room remained silent. Watching on as Bruce slowly finished a piece of meat, wiped his mouth on a napkin, and stood to meet him.

 

“I’m sorry,” Kon began. “I gave him food but I didn’t mean it like…”

 

Without permission or apology Bruce took his face in his hands and pulled him forward.

 

For a terrifying I’m-pretty-sure-I-had-a-really-weird-maybe-wet-dream-about-this-once moment he thought the man was about to kiss him. Instead Bruce pulled them together and scraped Kon’s cheek quickly against his own.

 

A throb. Something between them. But not strung between them.

 

“You’ve got a pack bond with someone in my pack,” the man observed as he released him.

 

Kon swayed on his feet, trembling as the intense intimidating bubble of Bruce’s scent retreated. “I-I do?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Dumbly. “I… are you sure? I…”

 

“I can feel it,” the man told him. “So can you.”

 

“But…” he glanced uncertainly at Tim.

 

“You’ve been behaving like you can sense our pack bonds all night,” Bruce said as if it were the first piece of evidence in a criminal case. “You made sure to start eating after all the core pack members, you sat yourself in a position where you can see and guard the door Jason can’t, and you showed me your neck when you took food from my table.”

 

“I did?”

 

“Yes.” The omega’s piercing scrutiny didn’t lessen. “You’re linked up somewhere.”

 

All at once the people around them turned to stare at Tim. The boy blushed, looked down, and shook his head. “It’s not me. I… we’ve had a potential pack bond for a really long time but… no. I would have noticed if that had happened.”

 

“I would never bond with him." Damian declared bitterly before anyone could ask. "He doesn’t keep his promises.”

 

Alfred shook his head almost apologetically when Bruce’s gaze swung round to him. "I fear I've hardly spend enough time with the young sir."

 

“Is it Dick?” Tim asked.

 

“No,” Jason answered. “No, fuck, it’s me,” the other alpha stood, marched around the table, and put a hand on Kon’s shoulder. _Pack_. It wasn’t a feeling. It was a knowing. Deep in his bones.

 

“It’s me,” Jason said again. “Fuck. _Fuck_. I think it stuck when we were at the kid’s bedside.”

 

“Pack bonds form faster in a time of shared hardship,” Bruce said.

 

"Yeah, that's fucking great," the alpha snapped. "You think I want that not-clone as my second?"

 

Bruce didn't flinch. "You're the one that accepted him."

 

"I..." Jason raked his hand through his hair. " _Fuck!_ "

 

“But…” Kon felt trapped between the two larger men. “What…?” he looked around. Grandma watched him with a quiet expression on her face. Something both happy and sad. Clark looked downright confused. Tim… hopeful.

 

“Conner.”

 

His gaze snapped back around to Bruce.

 

For the second time the man reached out to touch his face. This time he pushed Kon’s chin up into a slight submissive posture. That, paired with the physical contact, somehow awakened his awareness of the other man and the pack gathered around him.

 

Bruce grunted his satisfaction when he felt Kon willingly melt into the position. A submission. Once it was established the older man released him to, without a word, sit back down and continue with dinner.

 

Before Kon could question what had just happened Jason was in front of him. “I’m first,” he snarled. All teeth and glowing eyes. “You’re second.”

 

For once Bruce didn’t seem angry or disturbed by the growling alpha.

 

Kon bit back a sting of humiliation and showed Jason his neck without even thinking because… yes… that’s what they’d been doing. That’s how it had been working. Saving Damian, at Tim’s bedside, and even guarding the pack on the way to Wayne Enterprises. Jason was the first pack alpha and he was the sec— _oh God. Had he just…? Was he now…?_

 

Jason growled in approval when he saw the submission and – like Bruce – moved to sit down without another word. The dinner resumed more or less as if nothing had happened. But something had happened. Something monumental. Something Earth shattering.

 

He’d just been taken into the pack.

 

As simple as that.

 

_The pack… I have a pack… I…_

 

He returned to his chair in a haze, sat, and stared down at his half eaten dinner. The air still smelt the same, the people around him still felt the same, but somehow without him even really being aware of what he was doing or what was going on he’d been accepted as part of the pack. Bruce's pack. Tim's pack. _The_ pack.

 

What did that mean? He wasn’t core. He wasn’t like Jason or Alfred or Tim. He wasn’t a full part of the pack. Perhaps just a trial member held on with one dangerously new bond and the acknowledgement of the leader… but even if that was true he was still part of it. A member. Not because he had knocked off another member but because working with Jason they’d found a tempo, a pace, and a place for him.

 

His own space amongst the different cogs and gears.

 

The betas, the omegas, and the alphas…

 

Alphas.

 

Two.

 

He was the second pack alpha. He equalled the s on the end of that word.

 

_Oh God…_

 

He couldn’t finish his dinner. There was no way. He could barely manage water just then. He choked down what little of that he could, excused himself early, and fled upstairs to his makeshift bedroom. He was shaking as he sat down on the edge of the mattress. His fingers twitching and clenching in the fabric of his shirt.

 

He’d always wanted a pack. He’d dreamed of it, imagined it, and even attempted to invent it with Young Justice. But now, somehow, he had one. Not the one he ever thought he’d have. Not one he even understood all the way through. Not one he understood much of at all. But one that he was a part of.

 

It didn't feel like he imagined it would. It didn't feel like much when he wasn't zeroed in focusing on it. And even when he was focused on it he didn't really know what it was. Like a never before seen specimen dividing and multiplying on a petri dish. It wasn't a deeper understanding, a celestial connection, or a joyous sense of togetherness. It wasn't simply a hierarchy or a step ladder to climb either. It wasn't anything he could really name other than... a feeling... a knowing... _  
_

 

A knock.

 

He stiffened. “Yeah?”

 

Tim opened the door and poked his head in. “Hey.”

 

“Hey dude,” he practically squeaked. The most un-alpha like sound he’d ever made. “What’s up? I’m just, uh, chilling. H-hey. Do you want to call Cassie? Or Bart? We could find out when he can next go and spend some time with the Titans. T-that’d be cool, right?”

 

The omega stepped in and closed the door behind him. “Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah,” he rasped. “Why wouldn’t I be?"

 

"The pack?"

 

"Oh. That. I mean… I just… that just… happened. With Bruce and Jason I mean.”

 

“You know it’s not final,” Tim said softly. “It’s just the leader acknowledging you. If you don’t want to be part of the pack all you have to do is back off and break your bond with…”

 

“No! No. I want this. I… I just never thought…”

 

 _I… I have a pack. A real pack… a place in the pack… I’m the second pack alpha_ … and suddenly that was the best and most amazing position in the whole hierarchy of possible positions. The second pack alpha. _The_ second pack alpha. Made better by the realisation that Tim was _the_ second pack omega.

 

“…oh my God I broke his ribs. He let me into the pack and I broke his ribs.”

 

“Yeah.” Tim moved across the room and sat down beside him. “That was really stupid.”

 

“Oh God. What if he remembers and changes his mind? What if he wants to get rid of me? What do I do? He’s my first now, right? Like, that’s how it works.”

 

“I guess…”

 

“And we’re _alphas_. We’re the pack alphas. We have to guard the territory, protect the pack. We have to be good for you guys. We have to… it’s like in that old movie. The kid goes through puberty and his dad says he’s a man now. A real alpha. He has to be good for the pack. Which movie was that?”

 

Tim was giving him a funny look. “I’m pretty sure a million movies fit that criteria.”

 

“You know the one. It’s old. Real old. Everyone says it’s racist now.”

 

“We need to discuss what sort of movies you’re…”

 

“If Jason’s my first does that mean Bruce is your first?" He rushed on as the idea occurred to him. "He’s the first pack om— Wait, no. He’s the leader. Does that mean you’re the first? No. No you’re the second. Bruce is the first omega and the leader. Do you have to do what he says?”

 

“He’s kind of like my dad so…”

 

“What if I never bond with him? What if all I can do is Jason? One bond? Clark can’t pack bond with anyone. What if I can only bond with one person? What if that was my only pack bond? Will the baby always cry when I try to touch her?”

 

“She won’t stay a baby forever,” Tim said. “So, no. She won’t always cry.”

 

“So she’ll just quietly resent me as she grows up? Wow. You’re _terrible_ at giving encouragement.”

 

Tim frowned and looked down. “I was just trying to be realistic. You might not be able to form any more pack bonds for all we know.” A pause. “But,” blue eyes danced back up to looked at him, “I kind of doubt that.” He reached out and carefully touched his arm.

 

_Pack._

 

It was a distant tendril of knowing. Something he suspected was still flowing via Jason’s bond. But it was there and it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Not a just potential bond but a link that they could build on just by being together. Just by touching. Just by…

 

He seized Tim and pulled him into a hard fast kiss. Pouring all his nervous energy out in the movement and press of their lips.

 

The omega made a small mewling sound and melted into the contact. Responding with a trembling desperation that surprised Kon but sent the blood in his veins alight. After dinner it was almost too much. The small beautiful body curving up against his, the eager flick of the omega’s tongue as he started to instinctually seek out alpha saliva, and the unbearably sweet smell of him pressing against his senses.

 

Tim didn’t smell like Bruce. Bruce’s scent was fierce, heavy, and potent like a mouthful of black cherries. A mind bending allure turned up to eleven by the man’s extreme high hormone count.

 

Tim was soft, subtle, and sensual. Like a spoonful of ice cream rather than a barrel of raw sugar. And, _oh boy_ , but all he wanted to do was hold him, kiss him, and fuck him until the end of time. And he could now couldn’t he? They were alone. They were in a safe place. Tim seemed to want to… but what if he didn’t? He’d made the mistake of assuming the other boy wanted sex in the past... _Grow up, Kon_. He didn’t want to make that mistake again.

 

He broke apart their kiss. “Hey, hey do you want to…? Like, cause if you don’t I’m cool just doing this. Or if you want to we could just… you know… do stuff…”

 

Tim’s cheeks were spiked with colour, hair already somehow tussled, and pupils slightly blown. “Huh?”

 

“Like, we’re kissing. _Really_ kissing. Usually when we _really_ kiss we do other stuff as well. Better stuff. Not that I don’t like kissing. I love kissing. But in case you wanted to do something else I thought… And I just wanted to make sure…”

 

“Kon.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“You’re good.”

 

“Good? Like, you want to…?”

 

A knock at the door.

 

“Shit. Okay. Um. Don’t answer that. I um…” he stood up, untangling himself from Tim’s arms, and dashed across the room to open the door a crack. “Yeah?”

 

Martha stood on the other side. She looked worried. “Hey, big bear. Are you okay?” Silver grey hair was pinned into a messy french twist, plaid shirt tucked into her jeans, and wedding ring on the wrong hand.

 

He frowned. “Yeah. I’m good. Just...” made sure he was in a position to hopefully stifle any of Tim's scent "...hanging out."

 

“You left dinner very quickly and I thought you might not have been prepared for what happened," the woman said slowly. "Which is fine. I know pack politics can be really intense - believe me I know - and it’s okay if you’re not ready for that sort of commitment or if you’d rather wait…”

 

“It’s fine,” he forced a smile. “Seriously. I’m fine.”

 

“You sure? It didn’t occur to me until after but I can see why that could have been really confusing and upsetting if you weren’t aware it was coming or what it was.”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“And when you let Bruce put you into submission you more or less said ‘I want to be pack and your my leader’. I don’t know if you really realised that or were just trying to defuse the situation. He’ll understand if you made a mistake. No one’s going to blame you if you don’t have all the same instincts or experience and missed a few things. We all make mistakes.”

 

“No. It’s okay. I… I think I knew that.”

 

The woman studied him. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it? Ask some questions?”

 

“I do," he answered earnestly. "I will. But, um, not just now. I’m really tired. I’m just going to go to sleep.”

 

“Sleep?”

 

“Yeah.” Another forced grin. “That’s okay, right?”

 

“Of course. Of course big bear." She patted his hand fondly. "You have a rest and think about it. It’s a pretty big thing. And, you know, no matter what you decide don’t worry about me.”

 

That gave him pause. “Worry about…? Wait. Do I have to leave Smallville?”

 

She shook her head. “No. No. Of course not. I wouldn’t want to take you out of school in the middle of the year. Lord knows you’ve missed enough as it is.”

 

“But what about senior year?”

 

“Well,” she seemed uncomfortable with the suggestion. “If you’re part of the pack I could talk to Alfred and see if you’d rather do your senior year in Gotham.”

 

Kon stared. “At Tim’s school?”

 

“Or another. But yes. I imagine it’ll most likely be Tim’s.”

 

“In Tim’s class?”

 

“Yes," she conceded uneasily. "But, you know, there are only a hundred kids in your year at Smallville. There is probably closer to a thousand in Tim’s class. You probably won’t have the same classes.”

 

“Yeah but we could hang out at lunch and…” Something occurred to him. “What about Sally?”

 

The woman seemed relieved to hear this and flashed the first earnest he'd seen from her since she'd knocked on the door. “You can see her whenever you like. Or, if you’d rather, you can still finish school in Smallville. But this is far too premature to even really think about.” She patted his hand again. A motherly gesture. “Get some rest. We’ll talk about it later.”

 

“Okay…”

 

“Goodnight.”

 

“Night Nana…” He closed the door. Turned.

 

Tim glared at him from his spot on the bed. “Who’s Sally?”

 

“Hm? Sally? Oh. She’s no one.”

 

“No one? You want to stay at Smallville for no one?”

 

Kon frowned. “What? No. She’s a friend at Smallville high. You’d like her. Cassie likes her.”

 

A flash of anger. “Cassie’s met her?”

 

“No. She’s just seen photos. She _likes_ likes her. Shame Sally likes you.”

 

“She hasn’t met me.”

 

“But she _likes_ likes you,” Kon explained with a teasing grin. “She’s one of the people that posted about how hot ‘Timothy Drake’ is last week. She probably has your poster on her wall by now. She’s like that. Always falling in love with the newest cutest male omega celebrity. Though I suppose she'll stay in love with you forever now because, you know, there isn't anyone cuter.”

 

Tim's cheeks once again heated as he digested this information. “So she’s an alpha?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He seemed happier knowing this. “Why haven’t you introduced us?”

 

“Oh. You know. ‘Here’s my multi-millionaire boyfriend who by the way is also now famous. We met while we were out superhero-ing together.’ It’s not really how I start conversations. Besides, I haven’t really known her that long. I’ve only been at high school six months.”

 

“Which is most of your life.”

 

“Beside the point.”

 

He sat back on the bed suddenly unsure of how to get from this conversation back to where they were when Grandma knocked on the door. It had been going well. Had it been going well enough for him to just pick up Tim’s hand and pick up where they left off?

 

He glanced at Tim.

 

The boy caught his look, blushed, and turned his eyes down.

 

_Oh man, that is not a no. That is **really** not a no._

 

Kon felt a prickle of nervous excitement at the base of his groin. The eager jumpy feeling he got as he realised there was a chance he could be having sex soon. They were alone, would be alone for another few hours at least, and they hadn’t done _anything_ in almost a month. He knew Tim’s sex drive wasn’t as big has his – he was a low level after all – and Tim told him he didn’t ‘build up’ the way Kon did. But they’d barely even kissed before tonight and this wasn’t a threatening place where his pack might find him. And he had put himself on birth control which meant he did think about sex. He did like it. Want it. Surely then this would be…

 

Kon reached over and put his hand on the omega’s knee.

 

When that wasn’t protested he let his fingers slip between the boy’s thighs. Then up. Up his leg until he could run his thumb over the covered shape of…

 

Tim grabbed his wrist. Stopped him.

 

Kon looked over. Met the other boy’s gaze.

 

They stared at each other for what felt like an age. Tim’s eyes, as always, were stunning. Baby blue, almond shaped, and framed with lashes too long and too thick to belong to a boy. In those eyes he saw the green flag a moment before Tim pushed Kon’s hand – harder – against his groin.

 

He didn’t need to be told twice.

 

Holding his right hand hard against the omega he swung himself over and pushed Tim onto his back.

 

Tim yelped in surprise as he fell onto the mattress and Kon climbed onto the bed to straddle him. Sitting on his thighs even as his hand worked them apart. Finding that awkward he pushed Tim up and hooked Tim’s legs around his hips.

 

That was better. His groin was against Tim’s arse. Tim’s groin against his abs. The omega’s legs in a position where he could work them higher or wider if he wasn’t quite finding the right angle.

 

“K-Kon?”

 

“Hey, yeah, sorry. Too fast. _Way_ too fast. You’re just so hot, man. Like, seriously.”

 

“You too. You…” Tim arched up to reconnect their lips.

 

He kissed him. He kissed him and kissed him and kissed him. He kept kissing him. He never wanted to stop kissing him.

 

When he first had sex with Tim he’d been nervous. Really nervous. He’d never had sex before, had only ever really seen a few low grade porn movies online, and been on an ‘omegas talk to omegas’ site in which all the comments seemed to be ‘dumb alphas watch porn and think they know what we like’.

 

All the ‘what omegas want’, ‘dear alpha’, and ‘how to get from maybe to mate’ articles didn’t help either. In fact, it just confused and frightened him more. Some told him omegas liked to be dominated. Held down, manhandled, and left well and truly fucked. Some said omegas liked romance and should have a lot of money spent on them before they opened their legs. Some had lists of positions half of which involved two hundred dollar sex toys to be shipped from Germany.

 

In the end sex with Tim just… happened. He took control. It felt better to take control. And Tim seemed to respond to that. Not the violent dominance and submission as suggested online but a soft second cousin of it.

 

Now, he realised with a lurch, he was nervous again. But, like the first time, everything was just sort of happening. And, while he was still in control, he was not the only participant by any means.

 

Tim had hooked his ankles together behind Kon’s back, he’d slipped his fingers in the front of Tim’s pants, and they were both rapidly turning their kiss into something with a lot less lip and a lot more tongue.

 

He drew back with a ragged gasp and began working down Tim’s pants in earnest. The boy wriggled out of his shirt at the same time exposing pale pink planes of flesh. Each exposed inch of skin more tantalising than the one before.

 

His favourite thing about sex – well, _one_ of his favourite things about sex – was taking off Tim’s clothes. The omega usually dressed a size too large and the heavy bulk of his winter wear performed the unforgivable crime of hiding the shape and sculpt of his body. Unpeeling it from the other boy’s lithe, lean, and astoundingly white form was one of the greatest victories over injustice he could ever achieve.

 

The bony stretch of boyishly masculine shoulder blades, the hard flat of stomach, and the long terrifyingly fascinating journey his body made from waist out to hip. A line that continued around the symmetrical swell of his arse, between naturally parted thighs, and guided Kon’s gaze up to the dimples of Venus set into his lower back.

 

It should be illegal for Tim to obscure such beauty with such ugly clothes. If Kon’s xray vision was as good as Clark’s he would do nothing but stare at Tim all day. But the fog of his clothes always got in the way. Those fucking clothes.

 

He tore them away now. Pants, socks, and the multitude of top half layers Tim had got trapped in trying to pull up and over his head at the same time.

 

“Why are you wearing your entire closest today?”

 

“You’re one to talk,” the omega panted as he emerged from the tangle of fabric jabbed a finger at Kon’s chest. “That’s super shirt on inside out.”

 

“No it’s not.” A bold faced lie.

 

Tim snorted. “Yeah right. That’s your entire wardrobe and I can prove it.” He grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it up over Kon’s head. The second the chest inversed the red shield flashed. “Ha! There. I knew it.”

 

“Yes,” he rasped and bent forward to kiss him again. “You’re very smart.”

 

A fluttering grin. “I am aren’t I? I told you making friends with Jason was a good idea. I told you the pack would be good for you too.”

 

“We’re not friends.”

 

Tim’s smile slipped. “Huh?”

 

“It feels more like… allies,” he tried to explain. “We worked together to protect you, and Bruce, and Damian. I didn’t know what to do so I followed him. It felt right. And that feeling stuck.”

 

“That might be an alpha thing,” Tim muttered.

 

“Is that okay?”

 

A determined look. “It’s a start.”

 

Suspiciously. “You’re not going to order us on bonding dates or something are you?”

 

“Order you?" The boy's eyebrows shot up. "Technically you both outrank me now.”

 

His own grin dropped. “Huh? But… Jason, yeah, but I’m just a second. Same as you.”

 

Tim sent him a look. “Traditionally, alphas outrank omegas.”

 

“So if I was third pack alpha and you were second pack omega…?”

 

“I’d be allowed to give you a little more flack but, yeah, if you give an order I should still obey it.”

 

“Why?”

 

Tim seemed uncomfortable. “Look, I don’t know. I’m not saying it’s right I’m just saying that’s how it goes traditionally. Alphas dominate. Omegas submit.”

 

He snorted. “That’s bullshit.”

 

“You _are_ on top of me right now.”

 

Kon cleared his throat and put on an official English accent. “Well as hierarchical _equals_ , as _equal_ partners, and as two people with _equal_ rights I would like to formally ask your permission to stay on top of you and – in the most _equal_ manner possible –” he dropped his voice, “fuck you silly.”

 

Tim put a hand over his mouth and giggled. “Oh man, I freaking love you sometimes.”

 

“That’s a yes?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He grinned. “Splendid.”

 

And _that_ was why he loved Tim. It wasn’t because he was the cutest, hottest, prettiest little thing on the face of the planet. It wasn’t because he was the first omega he ever saw. It was because they could make each other laugh even when sporting a matching pair of boners. And if that wasn’t love then what was?

 

Tim hooked his fingers in his own underwear and pulled them down around his thighs. The smell of his arousal flooded the air. The slight salty musk of his manhood overshadowed by the heavy muggy scent of his omegahood.

 

He’d never had oral sex with Tim. Either giving or receiving. He knew it was a thing – he had super hearing in a house where people seemed quite fond of the activity – but despite wanting to try it the second the boy’s bottom half was exposed he’d never had the self-control to stop what they were doing long enough to attempt.

 

No. All he wanted to be was inside Tim. Deep inside him. And _oh shit I don’t need to wear a condom._ The realisation hit him like a freight train. He hadn’t forgotten about Tim’s birth control but it hadn’t occurred to him either. _Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh God yes._

 

He pinned the boy back into the mattress and devoured his mouth as a flush of alpha flavoured saliva exploded on the edges of his tongue. Sharp. Bitter. But obviously tasting a whole lot better to Tim. The omega clung to him, arched greedily into the kiss, and gasped for breath against his skin. He also reached down and began working Kon free of his jeans. Fast and frantic.

 

He groaned as the omega’s fingers found him. “Oh man. You’re going to kill me.”

 

“Kill you? I’m seriously going to die if you don’t fuck me real soon.” Tim pushed Kon’s pants down around his thighs. “Come on.”

 

“Now?”

 

“Now.”

 

Kon sent a silent prayer of thanks to whoever might be listening – because, yeah, his dick would definitely have exploded if he’d had to do any serious foreplay just then – and used his hand to guide himself into the other boy.

 

There was nothing better in the world than the hot wet drag and cling of Tim’s body. But entering it bare was a new explicit sexual kind of agony. More intense than he ever imagined it to be.

 

He tore his hand away from Tim’s before he squeezed it and crushed his bones, buried his face in the mattress as he moaned, and sunk himself into the moist heat with a few barely controlled thrusts. _Fuck this is amazing. Fuck he feels so good. Fuck I’m already choking back a knot. Fuck, how the hell did a piece of plastic…?_

 

Tim looked disappointed. “It feels the same.”

 

“Same?” Kon squeaked. Screw whatever pack bonding did to him, _that_ most un-alpha sound he’d ever made.

 

“Yeah. Yeah like… maybe a bit different. How is it for you? Without the condom I mean. Different?”

 

It took all of his power not to just pin Tim back against the bed and hump into him as hard and fast as he was able. “Yeah.” It was the only word he could manage right now. “Yeah.”

 

“Yeah? It feels different? Better?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Tim studied him. The eyes of the detective. Then, he rolled his hips. A single circular rotation.

 

Kon cried out. The hot wet movement of the body right up against his cock better than he ever imagined it.

 

Tim’s eyes remained pinned on him. Studying. “You like it. You _really_ like it.”

 

Breathlessly. “Yeah…”

 

“How much?”

 

All at once. “Fuck just let me fuck…” he pushed Tim back against the mattress, locked their lips together, and thrust into him. Hard and fast. And _oh fuck that was probably too aggressive_. _Oh fuck that was too much too soon. Oh fuck he was fucking this up._ But Tim was smiling up at him as if he liked watching Kon lose it a little. As if he liked seeing him forget about pleasuring Tim and just focus on his own primal drive of more, deeper, harder and… “fuck you feel so fucking good. So fucking… you’re so fucking perfect. I wanna fuck you forever. For fucking…”

 

Tim’s smile grew. “You’ve- _uh_ -got a mouth on you when you’re h- _huh_ -orny.”

 

“Fuuuucccckkkk,” he whined. Long and broken. A sound like the kind he should be stealing from Tim not making himself. But he couldn’t feel shame. Not just then. He could barely concentrate on anything that was coming out of his mouth as the sound of the bodies slapping together filled the air, their scents twisted together, and Tim clenched impossibly tight around him.

 

“You can- _ow_ -come if…”

 

Kon froze. That wasn’t a sex sound. That wasn’t a good sound. That was a pain sound. “Fuck, you cool? You okay? You…”

 

“I’m fine, Kon.”

 

“No. I hurt you.”

 

He wasn’t an idiot. He knew Tim was small and he was big. He knew receiving wasn’t always as comfortable nor as pain free as giving. He knew he often hurt Tim during sex. But he tried to give him more pleasure than pain. He tried to keep himself in check. He wasn’t in check a moment ago. Tim wasn’t acting like he was receiving much pleasure either.

 

“Kon, Kon,” the boy touched him. “I like seeing you enjoy it. It’s fine.”

 

He pulled back. Withdrew.

 

A look of panic flashed across Tim’s features. “Kon?”

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured him as he stood and wriggled the rest of the way out of his jeans.

 

“What are you doing? You’re not getting a condom are you?”

 

No answer.

 

“No. Kon.” Tim sat up, flinched, and rolled onto his side. “This was meant to be good. Fun. I don’t want you to wear one.”

 

He stayed quiet.

 

“You just joined the pack. I wanted to celebrate.”

 

“We can celebrate with a condom,” he promised as he dropped to his knees and pulled his bag out from under his bed. With forced levity he grinned up at the frowning omega. “Do you want ribbed, studded, or smooth? I totally brought a heap when I heard I was coming to the manor for a while.”

 

Tim stared at him, rolled over, and quietly pulled his underwear back up.

 

“Hey, no. It’s okay. It can be fun.”

 

Without looking at him. “My birth control almost killed me, Kon. Worse, _Jason_ knows about it. I don’t want that to be for nothing.”

 

He looked at the pale curve of the boys back, down at the packs of condoms jammed into his pack, and sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. Okay.” _Please, be okay._ He stood, abandoning the condoms, and climbed onto the mattress beside the omega. “From behind.”

 

Tim looked at him over his shoulder. “You want to mount me?”

 

“No spoon. Less intense all round.”

 

Softly. “I thought face to face was our thing.”

 

“It is our thing. But condoms are also our thing. So, yeah, we’re trying out a lot of different things.” He wrapped his arms under Tim’s and pulled him back against him. “See, not too bad.”

 

“I like kissing,” Tim said quietly.

 

“I can kiss you if you turn your face roughly ninety degrees to the right.”

 

The omega complied and he quickly stole the boy’s lips with his own. It was a slower kiss than before. Less tongue and more… _them_.

 

He did prefer having sex with Tim face to face. He often rolled him over before he knotted him but the act itself was better when the boy was facing him. Tim could touch him, hold him, and the position made him tighter. Plus mounting seemed so… formal. It was all about alpha and omega and not about him and Tim. But spooning was nice. He could get into spooning. Especially when Tim was kissing him over his shoulder like this.

 

He kissed Tim until they melted into the position, pushed the omega’s underwear back down his legs, and tested the waters with a couple of fingers. Tim took three easily and it didn’t take a lot of effort to work in a forth. Tim shuddered at the added girth and Kon crooked his palm so the heel of it rubbed against the back of Tim’s balls. That was the right move. He felt the omega shake against him as a fresh trickle of slick seeped down between his fingers.

 

He was ready.

 

The second time entering him was easier. He held him close, kissed him, and fucked him as slow as he was physically able. That rhythm only broke down after Tim moaned into a pillow and spasmed around him. A sure sign of an anal orgasm. After that Kon just needed to thrust four and a half more times before he was coming. A slow near painful blitz of sensation that started with ejaculation and ended with a knot.

 

“God…”

 

“That feels different.”

 

He blinked his eyes back into focus. Surprised Tim would be talking with a knot inside him. Usually omegas either napped or dozed with a knot in them. A natural reaction as their body concentrated on absorbing what had given them and outputting a stronger more alluring sense of smell designed to make the captive alpha fall in love with them.

 

He needed no help in that department.

 

“What feels different?”

 

“Without a condom,” Tim explained sleepily. “I… your come… I think I’m getting high on your hormones…” his eyes drifted closed. “Feels good…”

 

Kon propped himself up on an elbow and studied him as he rested. Lips red and swollen from kissing, hair a tangled mess that fell below his chin, and narrow body rising and falling with each breath. And maybe, just maybe, Tim's knotted scent was having a bit of an effect on him after all. All he wanted to do was hug him, hold him, and keep him close and safe.

 

_God, he’s cute. I bet he’d make even cuter babies than Bruce. Babies that wouldn’t cry when I try to touch them. Babies that—_

 

He caught that line of thought and examined it with shock. Tim. Babies. The ideas crashed together in his brain. A mess of possibility that he always in theory knew was there but never actually considered in practise.

 

Did Tim want kids? He didn’t seem very comfortable around Lemons.

 

Did Kon want kids? Was that part of his planned future with Tim? Was that a future step? A goal? When did he plan to meet it? One year? Five? Ten? How many? Omegas usually bore between six to ten children and raised roughly five, the rest being adopted out or given to beta pack mates to raise. But that was _usually_ and this pack was obviously not _usual_. If this pack was usual Jason would be the leader, Bruce his mate, and fifty percent of their numbers would be betas.

 

If the pack was usual Bruce would never have been able to become Batman, Tim would never have been able to become Robin, and he would never have been allowed to wander onto their territory.

 

He liked the unusual better.

 

The unusual was talking about the sire lineage as an interesting connection to history rather than something that had to be upheld. The unusual was an omega putting him on his knees for hurting another alpha. The unusual was a beta marrying an alpha, an ‘outsider’ having a child with the pack leader, and him being taken in.

 

The unusual was all the best things in his life.

 

And the most unusual – the omega that he’d somehow managed to win despite in no way being worthy – was the very best.

 

He touched the boy’s arm just to feel the thread strung between them. _Pack_. A small but certain spark that eclipsed but didn’t kill the even further away possibility of another more dangerous bond. _Mate_.

 

One day… one day…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't written a proper sex scene in so long. I hope it's okay.


	39. Chapter 39

Damian stood in a rigid woollen suit and worked the last of the stiffness out of his new shoes. They were stealth-less, square toed, and decidedly useless. A trend he was learning dominated in western fashion. From the padded shoulders that offered no protection to the drape of his tie which lay knotted around his neck like a noose waiting for his enemies to catch onto. None of it invited an image of power. None of it spoke to renown. None of it compared to the splendid robes, turbines, and swords he was used to seeing adorn people of influence.

 

Yet this was what Pennyworth had laid out for him and was what the rest of the family had also equipped themselves with as they prepared for the hearing that would decide his father’s fate. Todd got the longest straw, his alpha status seemingly affording him the chance to wear a looser version of the same ridiculous getup. At least enough to allow for movement. The presented omegas got the shortest. Both his father and Drake were forced into fitted jackets and starched collars. His father, if the shape of his chest was anything to go by, had also been wrapped in some kind of breast binder.

 

It was a future he looked upon with dread.

 

“He’ll be alright.”

 

Damian’s head snapped around to glare at the alpha standing beside him. Conner stood in jeans and a t-shirt. Exempt from their clownish costumes by merit of his last name. The Kents, after all, had no business being at Bruce Wayne’s trial. They would ride out this battle from the sidelines. No doubt listening in with their unnatural hearing.

 

“Bruce,” Conner specified when Damian didn’t say anything. “He’ll be alright. They won’t lock him up for using those robots. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

 

“Don’t talk to me,” Damian snapped.

 

Conner frowned. “I’m sorry I… you looked worried and…”

 

“ _Oathbreaker_ ,” he snarled in Arabic. An insult made far stronger by the application of his mother tongue.

 

To his surprise Conner seemed to understand what he’d said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep our promise. I really am.”

 

Damian recovered quickly. “Your apology is worthless to me.”

 

Conner made sure no one else was listening before responding. “I can’t kiss you,” he whispered furtively. “You’re _ten_. And unpresented. And it would just be _so_ messed up. But we’re pack now, right? We’ve got to try and get along.”

 

Cold. “Where is that written?”

 

A stab of puppyish hurt raced across the older boy’s face. Damian didn’t flinch. He didn’t have any sympathy for the half-blood. Not when his request had been so simple and yet so brutally denied.

 

All he’d wanted was a kiss. All he’d wanted was a piece of reassurance that his life wouldn’t be all high collars, greedy fingers, and disqualification. All he’d wanted was a taste of what Drake had. A piece of hope for his future as a low level omega. It hardly seemed like a big ask especially when he could have ordered Conner to use his powers for his own gain.

 

Especially when the younger Kent obviously appreciated the caste, admired the Wayne family features, and had did not hesitate to touch Drake who was also underage.

 

Yet he was thrown across the back seat of the car as if he were something venomous. As if he were revolting. As if he were a low level omega. But not one like Drake. Not one that was smart, beautiful, and nice enough to be loved by more than one high level alpha. Instead one like the kind that his grandfather dismissed as useless. A distraction not strong enough to fight and not worthy to bare children.

 

An ugly truth proven by the fact that he had needed rescuing three times in the last few weeks. By the fact that his mother had replaced him almost as quickly as his father. By the fact that an alpha that liked low levels didn’t even like him.

 

“You don’t really dislike Tim do you?”

 

Damian sent Conner stark look. “What has Drake got to do with anything?”

 

“You said pack members don’t have to get on. And you don’t get on with Dr-eh-Tim. Does that mean you dislike him?”

 

Damian snorted. Of course a Kent would hear that and worry about his boyfriend and not himself. Of course.

 

“He doesn’t really…” Conner began.

 

“I don’t give a damn about Drake. I hate _you_. You broke your promise. You pushed me with your powers. You _hurt_ me! What part of that don’t you understand you _stupid_ half-blooded dog!?”

 

The alpha recoiled, cheeks darkening. “I… I…”

 

“You didn’t realise. Of course you didn’t realise! You’ve always just had eyes for Drake. You don’t realise _anything_ else no matter how—”

 

“Damian.”

 

He looked up. The pack was looking back at him. Todd with a quiet regard, Drake with concern, and Pennyworth with worry. Bruce was at the epicentre of it. His look was unreadable. A cold stare.

 

“Not now.”

 

“Not now?” Damian croaked in disbelief. “That’s all you’re going to say to me? Not…”

 

Kent swooped forward. “Hey, it’s okay. Stressful time and all that. It’s okay to lose it a little. God knows I am.” He touched Bruce’s hand once – a gentle comforting gesture – before turning to Damian. “Can we talk?”

 

Damian stared up at the alien. “We’re talking.”

 

“Well, let’s go for a walk then,” the alien took him by the arm and towed him out the door. He allowed it only because being unable to break Kent’s grip would be even more humiliating than being taken aside like a tantruming child… if only just.

 

They turned off the usual hallway after a few yards and made their way through an unheated selection of rooms. The curtains were knotted and carpet left to groove around the feet of the furniture. Another forgotten cell of his father’s massive house. Despite the dust Kent – decked out in a baggy old suit with a blue and yellow striped tie – marched unhurriedly through until they reached a door that led outside.

 

“Shame that snow didn’t stick around,” he commented as he flicked the deadbolt. “It was so beautiful. It can be really fun too.”

 

“Snow is inconvenient,” Damian said coolly.

 

Surprised. “How so?”

 

“It’s easy for someone to track you through snow.”

 

“Not when you can fly,” Clark said with a grin.

 

“ _Tt_ ,” Damian looked aside. “Not all of us are as gifted as you, alien.”

 

The man’s grin fluttered and died. “No. I suppose not.” He pushed open the door and they both stepped outside.

 

For a time they walked in silence. Mindlessly working their way across his father’s Spartan lawn toward the gardens and graves of the Wayne family. It wasn’t the first time he’d been out here recently.

 

They’d buried his brother two days ago.

 

It wasn’t a funeral. No one knew him well enough to truly mourn his passing, he least of all. But he’d been forced into yet another suit, the gutted beheaded body had been lowered into the ground, and a tombstone ironically reading ‘Levi Wayne’ had been erected.

 

Levi. It was a name that meant angels. A concept that spat on everything al Ghul. But, more importantly, it was a name his brother would recognise. One tagged onto him not just for the comfort of the living but in service to the idealistic notion that if his spirit ever became aware then he would be able to connect himself in however small a way to the name.

 

The whole ritual seemed curiously theistic for his atheist father and – Damian concluded – was most likely Kent’s idea. The man had somehow developed an attachment to his deformed twin and was the only one who seemed to truly mourn at the grave site.

 

“I’m sorry about Bruce.”

 

Damian looked up at the alpha and then away. He didn’t say anything.

 

“I am,” the man pressed the issue when it became obvious Damian wasn’t going to reply. “He really is on edge right now. He’s not admitting it but he is. He hardly slept last night. Not that he usually does but… you know.”

 

Damian dipped his head. He didn’t want to talk about his father’s sleeping patterns. He didn’t want to talk about anything.

 

The alpha sighed. Clearly giving up as he cut straight to the chase. “What did Kon promise to do for you?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Nothing?”

 

Sullenly. “He owed me a favour.”

 

Kent’s lips twitched toward a rueful smile. “Ah. Yes. The favour. I remember that.”

 

He drew to a sudden stop. “You _remember_ that?”

 

“You mentioned it when I was… gone.”

 

Damian felt his insides constrict in horror. “You remember what I said to you when you were dead?”

 

“Some of it,” Kent said softly. “Did you ask him to check if you were a low level omega?”

 

That horror rose to panic. “No. No! I… I…”

 

“That’s what you said you were going to use it for. His X-ray vision isn’t the best. If he—”

 

“I didn’t ask that!”

 

“Okay,” Clark didn’t raise his voice. “That’s okay.”

 

“I… we have to go to the court…” he tried to make his escape. To turn back to the house and flee back to the room where his pack were no doubt waiting for them.

 

Clark reached out and gently stopped him. “No we don’t. You don’t have to go if you’re not in the mood. Bruce won’t blame you if you don’t. He really wouldn’t.”

 

“I want to,” he lied. “I…”

 

“Would you like me to check if you’re an omega?”

 

He stopped. Stared. “It’s illegal.”

 

Clark’s lips twitched toward a smile. “So is driving at your age. It hasn’t stopped you in the past.”

 

“W-what’s the point?” Damian stammered. “I… I am. I…”

 

“What makes you so sure?”

 

“I just am!” _Why else would my mother have told me? Why else would I have needed to be rescued so many times? Why else would Conner have rejected him? Why else would Colin have smelt—?_

 

“Is it a bad thing to be?” The man asked earnestly.

 

“No. Yes!” He threw his arms up, shrugging of the alpha. “You don’t understand.”

 

“No,” Kent said smoothly. “I don’t. You’re not, by the way.”

 

“If you don’t understand then w—” he broke off as he realised what had just been said. “I-I’m not?”

 

“No,” Clark said. “You’re not an omega. You’re missing the organs.”

 

Stunned. “What am I?”

 

The man shrugged. “A beta or an alpha. It’s harder to distinguish between those two in a male. You might have alpha salvia glands coming in your mouth or they might be twelve year old molars. I can’t tell. Why do you think it’s a bad thing to be a low level omega? Is it an omega thing or a low level thing?”

 

He didn’t answer. Stared at the alpha.

 

“Damian?”

 

Still nothing. It was like the whole world was trapped in his throat. A clog made up of everything he’d ever known.

 

Clark sank down to his knees before him, concerned. “Damian? Are you…?”

 

“M-mother lied?”

 

A sad look filtered across the man’s face. This time it was his turn to be quiet.

 

“W-why would she do that? There’s no… why would she?”

 

“If I understood your mother Damian…” he didn’t finish that sentence. Didn’t need to.

 

 _What if I told you you were a low level omega?_ His mother’s lie. Framed in the context of a question. Why? Did she think that made it honest? Did she think he would answer it? Or did she want to string out her lie longer just to see him suffer? Because he had suffered. He thought of everything that had happened. He thought of his abandonment, his brother, and his life with the League of Assassins. He thought about all the times he’d almost died recently and the people who had saved him. He thought about asking to kiss Conner, the jabbers, and being held up by Colin and inhaling the boy’s new alpha scent.

 

Heavy. Strong. Warm.

 

The pang of grief he got realising it was a scent he was no longer allowed to enjoy was startling. His grandfather had always told him the only thing more wasteful than low level omegas were those barbarians that behaved like them. Which was true. Of course it was true. But…

 

He thought about Dick and Jason kissing. About bond breakers.

 

He thought about Drake’s friend – an alpha – who said she liked alphas.

 

He thought about things he didn’t even realise where in his head. Things that stuck there like glue.

 

And suddenly the realisation that he wasn’t an omega had a whole lot of new terrifying concepts attached to it. Because if he wasn’t an omega there were certain things that shouldn’t have done, or thought, or still be thinking…

 

A buzz.

 

Kent pulled his phone out of his pocket, looked at the caller ID, and sighed. He didn’t answer it.

 

“I think it’s time to head down to the courthouse. Are you sure you want to go?”

 

Damian nodded numbly. Barely registering the question.

 

Five minutes later he joined the others in the car. Conner was staying behind and Dick was absent. Otherwise it was the whole pack… even the girl wriggling and yawning in a backwards baby seat. She was neat enough he could only assume she was coming into the courtroom too. No doubt a ploy by the army of lawyers his father had hired to absolve him of his crimes.

 

He didn’t have enough mental space left to will up his usual resentment of her. His brain was still a storm of terrifying ifs, maybes, and perhaps. _If_ he wasn’t an omega that meant he was an alpha or a beta. _Maybe_ he was a low level beta. _Perhaps_ he was like Grayson.

 

 _No_. That was just Grayson getting into his head. Filling it with senseless perversions. With the man’s nonsense of castes wilfully and wantonly stepping outside the roles assigned to them despite the obvious futility of it. Omegas were meant for alphas. Alphas were meant for omegas. Betas were meant for betas. It was a system that had worked for tens of thousands of years. Older even than his grandfather. And for good reason. No offspring could he produced from mismatched breeder castes and the union between betas held together the core structure of a pack.

 

Sure, there were a lot more alphas than omegas but that was nature weeding out the weak genes. Only the strongest alphas would be able to claim the omegas. Only the highest level omegas should be offered in order to speed along this process of natural selection. The betterment of the human race.

 

That’s what he believed. That’s what he always believed. That’s what he was taught. It was the truth. It had to be.

 

So why did he want to kiss Conner? Why did he like being held by Colin? Why did none of this add up?

 

“Hey.”

 

He looked up.

 

Drake sat across from him. Stupid perfect Drake who the whole world adored now. They’d probably love him even more once they saw him in his omega tailored suit. They _defiantly_ would. No alpha in the world would reject his kiss even if he was a low level. And that shouldn’t matter to him. But it did.

 

“Are you worried?”

 

“No.” Damian snapped.

 

“I am,” the boy said softly. “But it’s going to be okay. If Dick was here he’d tell us all it’s going to be okay. Bruce has his lawyers. He’s not going anywhere. He can’t not with…” he looked at the baby in her backwards cradle. Wriggling, bubbling, and yawning.

 

His father was in the front passenger seat. An odd place for him but perhaps understandable given the driving arrangement. If he heard their conversation he gave no indication of it. Instead he just stared forward looking pale, sick, and… scared?

 

That look shocked Damian out of his downward spiralling thought tornado. He’d never seen his father look scared before. It was a soft look kind of fear. Something creeping in around the edges of his eyes and the corners of his lips. Why was he scared? Did he think he would lose the trial? Did he think he would be taken away?

 

Could he really be taken away? Just for using his resources to look for mother? Just for sending the robots after Leviathan?

 

For the first time Damian perceived the trial as a danger. A thing that could rob the pack of its leader for an indeterminable amount of time. A thing that could snatch his father away right when the man seemed to be closest to him… and also closest to the girl. But breaking his father’s bond with his sister wasn’t worth breaking his own bond with his father. Nothing was worth that. Not when he’d finally won it. Not when it meant his father had come to find him after he’d run away in the hospital. Not when, for the first time, he felt important just for being rather than for what he could one day be used for.

 

“He’ll be alright,” he told Drake. A sentence that seemed to surprise the young omega.

 

“You think so?”

 

“Do you think I would say so if I did not believe it? You are a fool then, low level.”

 

Drake sat for a moment, blinked, and then snorted with strained laughter. “I don’t know if you suck at comforting or if you’re amazing at it, demon-brat.”

 

His lips thinned. “Only a weak mind needs comfort and only someone as pointless as you would draw it from such words.”

 

Drake’s eyebrows arched. “Yeah? Only demon-brats say demon-bratty things like that.”

 

A pointed cough from Pennyworth. “Let’s keep it civil, young sirs.”

 

Todd shifted in his seat with a heavy sigh. “Things were just bout to get interesting,” he muttered and went back to staring out the window.

 

In the front his father had turned around to regard them all with a strange look in his eye. It wasn’t fear anymore. It wasn’t something Damian could name. But it focused on each of them in turn with an odd unique fondness. Pennyworth, then Drake, Todd, the girl, and finally him.

 

“It’ll be alright, Damian.”

 

“Is that not what I said?” He huffed back with false bravado. “This whole exercise is pointless, father. They know you used the robots to hunt down Leviathan and defend this filthy city. They should be grateful. A mad dog is the one that bites the hand that feeds it.”

 

The omega regarded him carefully. Seemed to try to say something. Couldn’t. Finally Bruce turned back around to stare out the windshield. “It’ll be over soon,” he promised. And, no matter what Damian said to Drake about comfort, he found the lack of it in that phrase numbing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no internet folks! It went out for reasons that I won't go into and it's going to take until the end of the month before my housemates and I can pull the money together to get it back. This means my replies will be late and it may take a little longer for me to walk to the library and post a new chapter.
> 
> Bear with me guys! When I do finally see your comments I will love them even harder.


	40. Chapter 40

Bruce had been here before.

 

He’d stood at the same place in a different courtroom, he’d made the same speech before a different jury, and faced the same black buttoned robes borne in on a different judge. It was all a disorientating remake of the events that had followed his public outing as an omega five years before. The differences functioning only to highlight the jarring similarities.

 

The jury were on the opposite side, the wood that topped the bench darker, and his clothes even more suffocating. Even more restricting. He was more used to the high collar and tighter cut of attire expected from a formally presented omega now. What he wasn’t used to was the new design tailored to hide his post pregnancy body, the rub of heavy fabric against the scar between his hips, or the ‘male nursing vest’ digging into his shoulders. A bra for all intents and purposes and the most uncomfortable thing he’d ever been bound in for the sake of fashion.

 

But even that couldn’t distract him from the sickening understanding that, like five years ago, he was standing up and begging for his life not to be interrupted. _Please let me go home. Please let me watch my daughter grow. Please let me hold onto my son. Please let me lie down at night beside my mate._

_Please don’t send me to jail over this._

 

“My son was missing, your honour.” His only excuse, offered without any more validation or explanation.

 

The man behind the podium studied him as he said this. “The police were looking for your son, Mr Wayne.”

 

Simply. “They hadn’t found him. I had to try.”

 

One of his lawyers sprang up like a bent bamboo twig snapping back into shape. Eager and hungry for his moment in the spotlight. “Indeed, what parent wouldn’t do all in their power to try and find a missing child? A child likely kidnapped by terrorists? A child lost on the street? Can anyone imagine being in that situation? I want you to try for a moment. Try and…”

 

Bruce didn’t bother listening to the speech. He’d heard it all before. The man had enthusiastically recited it several times in the office before the court hearing much to the annoyance of the other lawyers.

 

Instead Bruce let his gaze wander to the side where Alfred sat solemn in the first row. He held his daughter. She looked like nothing more than a bundle of white and blue blanket. A lump of cloth that the butler bounced gently against him as the lawyer’s speech become more and more impassioned. The only bit of her Bruce could see was a tiny pink fist tugging at the beta’s collar. Small with miniscule nails that glittered on the tip of every finger.

 

His pup.

 

The reason why he needed to walk home without a conviction. And not the only one.

 

Five years ago when he’d stood in court he’d done so for himself. He was angry, alone, and wanted the means to stay on his egotistical path to self-destruction. He’d pettily refused Dick’s offer to buy him his full entourage of lawyers, barely spoken a word to Alfred once the verdict had been passed, and demanded more from Clark than he had any right to at that point. Cruelly using the man because he was an alpha and he probably deserved it. All of it, ultimately, for himself.

 

To feel powerful. To feel strong. To feel not like an omega.

 

Now things were different. He wasn’t the leader of a broken pack or a man determined to die. He wasn’t propped up by the childish fantasy that he was a standout omega or that Batman was a solo enterprise. He had a life he needed to return to, people he owed, and those he loved. He had his family, his children, and his mate. All of it impossibly important in a way he would have scoffed at standing in the courtroom five years ago.

 

He knew a younger him would have been disgusted to see what he had become. He knew a twenty year old version of himself would have looked at a bite mark on his neck, at the stretch marks on his belly, and called him an alpha’s bitch. At thirty years old he would have seen the same and called him weak, a failure. A forty year old Bruce would have simply turned away.

 

But he found himself looking at those younger versions of himself and silently calling them children. Self-obsessed cowards who – like Talia – were refusing to see the world through anything other than their own egotistical despairing filter. One of self-importance and needless adversary.

 

The world wasn’t so simple, life wasn’t so black and white, and some prices were worth paying for happiness. Batman might not be one of them. But Batman wasn’t so weak as to die just because he embraced other aspects of his life. Batman wasn’t so fragile as to need absolute attention or else he would end. Not anymore.

 

The fist on Alfred’s collar retreated out of his line of sight.

 

He felt a painful tinge constrict around his throat at the loss. It was irrational. She was right there. She wasn’t leaving. But, despite it, he couldn’t smother the unhappy absence that left him with. That feeling grow as he realised if they sentenced him to jail the number of days he had left with her would be limited. Unless of course Clark followed through with his threat of faking his death.

 

But, somehow, he couldn’t see that happening. How could they fake his death in a way that wouldn’t be discovered? How could he be with his daughter and not be caught by a stray photo? How could he be such a shadowy part of her life? The life of his pack?

 

How could he not? If they demanded he surrender to prison how could he tolerate a potentially huge amount of time away from her? From them? His bond with Damian would break. His bond with Clark would starve.

 

He might forget what she smells like. The simple indescribable smell that only his scent blind pack would attribute to something as crass and simple as lemons. The most beautiful smell in the world.

 

The judge. “Hold on.”

 

The lawyer spluttered to a stop, cut off at the crescendo of his speech. “B-but your honour!”

 

“You’ll be allowed to finish. Bailiff. Bring Mr Wayne his infant.”

 

Bruce’s head snapped around. “No. No, I’m not good at holding her yet. If I’m stressed she cries.” It wasn’t the right thing to say. It wasn’t contusive to the ‘perfect parent omega’ image his lawyers were building up. But if any of it crossed some kind of line it didn’t show on the judge’s face.

 

“If she cries we’ll take her off you again, Mr Wayne. But I understand this is the first child you’ve been bearer to. That bond is a strong one and I won’t attempt to vie against it for your attention. I know I’ll lose.”

 

He didn’t have anything to say to that and gingerly took the girl off the bailiff as he brought her over. She squeaked as she came within the aura of his scent and for a sickening moment he thought she would start to cry immediately. Instead she blinked blindly up at him and nuzzled once against his breast.

 

It was a strange relief realising she affiliated his scent more with food than anxiety.

 

He brought her up, inhaled the scent off the top of her head, and without thinking ran the underside of his jaw against the crown of her skull. A parent bonding action that would mark her with his scent.

 

The judge smiled at him knowingly. “Feel better, Mr Wayne?”

 

He nodded once.

 

She wasn’t the source of the peace he’d found within himself recently. She wasn’t what had helped him step beyond the bleak antagonistic world he’d occupied when he’d had his love affair with Talia. If anyone Clark was more to blame for that. But more so the journey he himself made as triggered by all the people who had flooded into his pack and his life. Damian, Tim, Dick, Jason, Alfred, Clark, Conner… and her.

 

The judge waved at the lawyer. “Please continue.”

 

“I…” the man floundered. “Forgive me, your honour, I have lost my…”

 

Another lawyer jumped up to the man’s rescue. “I think Mr Wayne has just here made the point better than any of us could. We are all victims of those we love and we cannot choose the love we have for our children.”

 

A third lawyer. “I would also like to point out omegas do experience parent bonds stronger than any other caste. He is doing only what any good bearer would. How can we punish him for that?”

 

“Omega in distress,” the forth lawyer claimed.

 

“Crime of passion,” insisted the fifth.

 

“If she…” everyone turned to look at a member of the jury. She turned bright pink at the sudden attention and turned her gaze down submissively. “I, um, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken.”

 

“What were you going to say?” The judge asked.

 

“I… it’s just… not important. I shouldn’t have.”

 

“Speak.” An order.

 

“I…” she visibly gathered herself. “When I had my first I found that if you’re stressed it’s better to put her on the shoulder furthest away from your omega gland. She can smell you but your scent is more just you and less the emotional stuff.”

 

The room dipped into silence.

 

“I’m sorry. He just said she cries when he’s stressed and…”

 

“Thank you,” Bruce said earnestly.

 

Another blush. “Y-you’re welcome, Mr Wayne. I… eh… it’s an honour speaking with…”

 

“This is hardly relevant.” Across the room the persecutor slithered off his chair to take to the floor uninvited. “Yes, it’s very easy to look at Mr Wayne and feel sympathy. Yes, we can see he has come a long way as a father. Yes, it makes us all warm inside to see an omega hold a baby. But this is all semantics. If it weren’t your honour that suggested letting him hold the child I would call it manipulation. No matter how nice it is to see Gotham’s ‘royal’ family breeding the fact of the matter is he stole over a million dollars of assets, wilfully endangered citizen lives, and has the means and motive to do it again. Should we allow this? Our lives matter as much as those of his children.”

 

Bruce’s lawyers all spoke at once. Then one at a time.

 

The judge heard each of them in turn as they reiterated the same arguments in heavier and heavier legal jargon. A bombardment he hadn’t had in his previous court case and one which he could only hope was winning over the jury. If anything they seemed more inclined to agree the heavier the wording became. As if nodding at the longer words said something about one’s IQ.

 

He took the opportunity to study the single omega among them. The woman who had spoken. Small, fragile looking, with her hair braided down one side of her neck to hide her bond mark… or perhaps lack thereof. She was the picture of a proper omega. The kind of person he used to hate on principle.

 

There had been a single omega in the jury that had decided his fate last time. He could still remember the bitter pucker of her lips as he was sentenced. _How dare_ you those lips had said. _How dare you try to be something better than what you are_. This woman looked at him and her eyes told a different story. _Thank you_ her eyes said. _Thank you for showing them we’re the same._

 

It was an admiration he wasn’t sure he deserved.

 

_Sometimes I still wake up in the morning and hate that I’m an omega. Sometimes I feel lighter knowing now that my uterus is gone. Sometimes I think the other castes are better. Stronger. Freer._

_But I know now that’s not true._

_I hope you do too._

 

“Mr Wayne.” The prosecutor was now standing before him in a pinstriped grey suit and a dark red tie.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Some have claimed you’re making a false admittance of guilt to cover for the crimes of the Batman.”

 

Simply. “Who?”

 

“Is it true?”

 

His lawyers started talking all at once.

 

“Batman had no motive,” the first snapped. “There is no proof they’re affiliated beyond a business partnership. Why would he give the order for the robots to hunt for Damian Wayne?”

 

“An order processed under Bruce Wayne’s ID,” the second pointed out.

 

“An order that endangered Batman’s stakes at Wayne Enterprises.”

 

“An order that Batman himself couldn’t override as witnessed by two police officers.”

 

“Why would Mr Wayne cover for Batman?” The final lawyer pressed the point home angrily.

 

“Order,” the judge called. “Let the prosecutor question the defendant.”

 

“Prosecutor?” the man said the word in disbelief. “I’m trying to give him a way out. His lawyers shouted me down.”

 

A murmur of uncertain laughter.

 

“Who are they defending, Mr Wayne? It’s clearly not you. Is it Batman? Why would they do that? It would have to be under your instruction. Why would you defend Batman? Who is he to you?”

 

Softly. “He’s a hero.”

 

“An interesting sentiment for you to hold of a man who has been taking your money.”

 

Bruce delivered the man a flat stare. “I fund him because he’s a hero.”

 

“Who is the sire of your child, Mr Wayne?” A sudden question.

 

All his lawyers leapt up at once with a chorused objection.

 

He hugged his daughter tighter, nervous the noise would disturb her. If she heard the sound she didn’t show any indication of it. That gave him pause. _There are two things in the world babies are afraid of. Falling and loud noise._ She clearly heard when pack members yelled or growled even if it was in the other room but wasn’t bothered by the lawyers shouting over his shoulder.

 

Why?

 

He thought about how perfectly unbruised she was when she was born despite being at the epicentre of a trauma severe enough to rip open his womb.

 

Could she…?

 

Humans absorbed sunlight. Not nearly as much as Kyrptonians but they absorbed some. If he’d absorbed some during his pregnancy and his body had transferred the energy to her she could have some superpowers that Clark didn’t start developing until he was nine months old. Powers like stronger cells and advanced hearing…

 

Advanced hearing which, like Clark’s, could be narrowed down and tune into those that mattered most. A cocktail effect that would filter out the noise of the world.

 

Part him was glad. If she was stronger it meant she was less likely to be hurt.

 

Part of him was terrified. How old would she be before she started being able to punch through walls? As a full blooded Krytponian Clark had arrived to earth severely depowered. He’d also unknowingly limited his powers simply by believing he couldn’t do certain things.

 

She would take one look at her father flying, shooting fire from his eyes, and do away with all such reservations.

 

“Order!”

 

The courtroom went quiet as the judge rubbed his brow, exasperated. “That question was inappropriate.”

 

The prosecutor. “I’m sorry, your honour.”

 

“Mr Wayne,” the judge looked at him. “Do you have any kind of personal attachment or affiliation with the Batman either through family ties, mate bond, or simular?”

 

“No.” A lie. The first he’d made that day.

 

“You haven’t covered a bond mark with makeup?”

 

He rubbed the side of his neck. It was clean thanks to Clark’s recent abstinence.

 

“Would you be willing to submit to blood tests to prove no bond?”

 

“Yes.” They were easily falsified.

 

“Then I think it safe to assume we can put aside this ridiculous theory,” the judge said. “I can see no reason why Batman would frame Bruce Wayne as having – in a time of desperation – searched for his son.” The man’s eyes tracked around the room once before returning to Bruce. “You’re guilty. I know that’s the decision the jury will come to and I know that because it’s true. You did everything you’re accused of.”

 

Softly into his microphone. “Yes.”

 

“My only concern is that you would do it again.”

 

Again. “Yes.” Followed by. “If my children or my pack were in danger.”

 

“We can’t have you endangering other people’s lives for the lives of your pack.”

 

“The robots won’t hurt anyone.”

 

Ruefully. “We can’t have you stealing and occupying air space either.” He turned to the jury. “Take a recess and make your decision.”

 

The events that followed that were oddly dreamlike. He was led into a large windowed room, still holding his girl, and listened to his lawyers as they attempted to brief him on their current battle plan. Then he went and sat with his pack who wore stiff new suits and sat in a line in the courtroom. Tim, Alfred, Damian, and Jason. Not everyone but enough to feel a radiation of comfort at seeing them together. Finally he returned to his place to hear the verdict.

 

It was then when the girl finally started crying having been nosing at the swell of his covered breast and being denied far too long. He hugged her onto his opposite shoulder, bounced her, and turned away from the bailiff as the man approached to take her away.

 

The man tried for an encouraging smile. “It’s okay, Mr Wayne. My pack has a lot about this age right now. I know what I’m doing. And I’ll give her right back to your butler over there. What’s her name?”

 

“I haven’t…”

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“She doesn’t…”

 

“She doesn’t have a name?”

 

“No. Yes. She does.”

 

“She does?”

 

“Yes I…” he swallowed those words down and passed her along feeling strangely useless. The man took her as promised to Alfred who immediately walked out into the hallway, removing the crying infant from the room. With both still outside he listened to his punishment. Then, as last time, he went to join him.

 

The man looked up as he approached, frowned, and looked him over again. Gaze snagging on his ankle before returning to his face.

 

“Six months,” Bruce answered before he asked.

 

The butler raised an eyebrow. “Is that all?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“No fine?”

 

“Not officially.”

 

“No community labour?”

 

“No.”

 

Alfred shook his head. “Forgive me, but it hardly seems fair.”

 

“Six months is a long time Alfred.”

 

The beta straightened, eyes alight and cheeky. “I can assure you, Master Bruce, you’re not going to leave the house in six months with this one crawling around, house arrest or no house arrest.”

 

Bruce felt a smile tug at his lips as he felt the weight of his new tracking anklet already locked into place. Six months restricted to his home, six months without involvement or access to his company, six months with his pack, his mate, and his daughter. The butler was right, it hardly seemed like a punishment. Not when the threat of jail time had been hanging like an axe over his head.

 

He felt numb with relief. Numb and yet also unable to stop smiling.

 

“Oh,” Alfred said. “And since you are going to be around I have decided to take a few months off.”

 

His smile vanished. “You’ve never taken time off.”

 

“Then it’s well overdue.”

 

“I need help with the baby.”

 

The man passed him the baby. “I think you’ll be fine. It’s time I went home to England for a visit.”

 

A sneaking suspicion. “Is Martha going with you?”

 

The butler looked shocked. “How did you…?”

 

He sent the man a look of flat disapproval. “Is there anyone besides me and Clark who know to look _outside_ of the family when it comes to love?”

 

“Bruce!” The bulk of the pack arrived in a tidal wave. They’d been in the room when the verdict had been announced, knew the outcome, and didn’t waste any time. Damian shot out before the others, moved as if to hug him, then hesitated. Bruce allowed the boy his space and instead accepted a gruff congratulations from Jason followed by a loose embrace from Tim. When that was over he turned to Damian.

 

The boy gazed at him. Eyes a piercing grey blue Bruce recognised from the mirror.

 

“Were those robots really looking for me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

And somehow, that was all that needed to be said between them.

 

The boy hugged him quickly around the elbows, Bruce hugged him back, and then without another word they all headed toward the exit.

 

A sea of cameras welcomed them when they made it out onto the street. Most were picked off by his lawyers who emerged like funnel web spiders out of their burrows to claim the spotlight. A few stuck to him like hungry flies as they made their way towards the waiting car. A few more seemed focused on Tim.

 

He would have to keep an eye on that.

 

When they reached the car Alfred strapped the girl into her baby cradle, the boys climbed into the back, and Bruce slipped into the front passenger seat. It was a strange place for him. If he was in his Bruce Wayne persona he would usually sit in the back. If he was Batman he would sit exclusively in the driver’s position. He chose the spot now so he could reach across and touch the driver’s hand. A single firm contact.

 

“I told you it’d be alright,” the man said smugly.

 

Bruce cocked an eyebrow. “You told me you’d fake my death.”

 

Clark rolled his eyes and flicked the car into gear. “You always remember the most irrelevant details.”

 

It wasn’t until they made it home, Bruce was sitting on their bed in the V of his alpha’s legs, and they were both attempting to untangle the bra from his middle when the man spoke. Soft and low.

 

“What’s her name?”

 

Clark’s hands were on him, gently unworking the hooks and straps of the bra. As Bruce came free the alpha leant forward and kissed the pink lines it had left on his back. His lips were as tender as his hands had been.

 

Bruce huffed, leant into the touch, and interlaced his hands with Clark’s to bring them up to his chest. Letting the man gently touch the breast tissue while still controlling the action. “I’ve just escaped jail if not prison. Must we now go through another list of yours?”

 

Clark shuddered as he gently grazed against encouraged nipples but his voice remained smooth, calm. “I was listening. You told the bailiff she had a name.”

 

Bruce froze. A rabbit caught in a spotlight.

 

“Was that true?” Clark pressed.

 

“I…”

 

“You’ve thought of one, haven’t you?” There was no judgement in Clark’s voice. Just an earnest curiosity.

 

“Not one,” he admitted and pulled the alpha’s hands away from his chest to hug them around his middle.

 

A teasing smile as Clark melted happily into the position and hooked his chin over Bruce’s shoulder. “Do _you_ have a list for me? Okay. It’s my turn to shoot them all down.”

 

“No. I… the reason I didn’t like any of…” he closed his eyes and sucked in a slow breath of air. “I want a name that has something to do with you, Clark. Not just one you like. Not just something that sounds pretty. A name that has something…” he fished for a better word, failed to find one, “ _you_ in it.”

 

Confused. “Something me?”

 

“Her last name is Wayne,” he tried to explain. “That’s the way it has to be. It’s unavoidable. But she’s not just a Wayne. She’s part you as well.” He forced himself to look at Clark, their faces close enough to kiss. “Her last name is mine. I want her first to belong to you.”

 

The man looked concerned. “You’re not thinking of naming her some obscure female version of Clark are you?”

 

“No. No. Just…” a deep breath. “Ellie?”

 

“Ellie? How is that…” realisation struck. “As in El?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Oh,” was all Clark said at first. Bruce was starting to suspect it was all he would say and then… “Wouldn’t her Kryptonian name be El-El? That’s kind of weird. Though I suppose it wouldn’t be the first L.L in my life.”

 

He sent he man a flat look. “Do you even research your own culture?”

 

“What’s that meant to mean?”

 

Bruce sighed. “Female Kryptonians have multi syllable names often ending in an A sound,” he began. “They use their father’s name as a last name until after presenting by which time they lose the last name all together. Your mother was not Lar-El. That would employ male naming conventions. She was Lara Lor-Van and became Lara when she presented. Likewise your cousin Kara Zor-El and the insurgent Fayora…”

 

Clark shook his head. “Okay. Okay. I get it. And regretting unlocking all those crystals for you. So she would be Ella Kal-El?”

 

Bruce shifted uncomfortably. “I was thinking Nora Kal-El. If that’s acceptable.”

 

“So her name – her full name – would be Eleanor?”

 

“Eleanor Martha Wayne.”

 

Clark didn’t say anything.

 

Bruce’s brow pleated. “Or, if you’d rather I was thinking Martha could be a first name. That would be a bit of both of us. Plus it’s less popular right now which is ni—”

 

“Hey. No. Stop. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful name.”

 

“But?” Bruce prompted.

 

“No buts.” The alpha pushed a kiss onto his cheek. “I love it. Really. Oh God Bruce I should have known you were going to think up something so…” another kiss, this one further around his face. Warm, gentle, and the kind of nonsexual kiss he would have never thought he would enjoy receiving as much as he did.

 

Bruce turned into it until their lips locked together. Soft, sweet, and everything he expected from the other man.

 

It didn’t seem right that, after rejecting so many names from Clark, the alpha would just accept the first one he put on the table. But Bruce would be lying if he said he was disappointed. He would be lying if he said he was anything less than thrilled. She had a name. An actual name.

 

Clark sighed with pleasure as their lips parted. “Oh boy. You’re amazing. Here I was thinking this would be an awful day and then you… come on,” he squeezed him. “Let’s go downstairs and introduce everyone to little Ellie El-El Lemons.”

 

“That’s it,” Bruce growled. “You are no longer my mate.”

 

A happy laugh. “I think I have a bite for you right here that says otherwise.”

 

He knew he looked far too eager as he glanced back at the other man. “You have a bite for me?”

 

“Oh yeah…” Clark’s hands moved back up to his breasts, his suddenly spicy breath flowed over Bruce’s skin, and his face dipped down to nuzzle under Bruce’s jaw.

 

He tipped his head, welcoming the alpha, and relishing the idea of wearing his mark again. It was silly. He knew Clark wasn’t going anywhere. Their relationship, despite recent fights, was stronger than it had ever been. Even so, he liked having the mark. He liked knowing Clark was addicted to him, bonded to him, and that the man enjoyed his taste and his presence in his life enough to stay that way.

 

His teeth sunk into his neck. Gentler than usual. Usually when he bit him it was during sex. Usually Clark was hauling himself back from the brink to indulge in the flavour of his neck. This time the man tenderly cupped his breasts, pulled him against him, and eased his teeth into his omega gland. Somehow aroused enough to be ready to bite but not fraught and frayed to the end of his rope.

 

Perhaps they should bite like this more often.

 

Perhaps, he thought as he felt a twitch in his groin as Clark’s bite become greedier… as the fingers on his breasts started tugging and teasing rather than just holding… they didn’t _have_ to go downstairs and inform the pack of her new name _quite_ yet.

 

After all… he couldn’t exactly be fucked so soon after giving birth… but he was a man and there were other options. Options like Clark’s mouth on places more interesting than his neck. Options like holding the alpha down as watching as he humped – starved and desperate – into the mattress. Options like reserving their positions and taking a turn on top. Though, with his C-section still healing he wouldn’t be able to hump… _oh what a shame. I can’t **possibly** thrust right now. You’re just going to have to do all the work, Kent. And you will won’t you? If I tell you. If I order you too._

 

Bruce purred with satisfaction at the vivid stream of ideas.

 

Yes. Telling the pack her name could wait…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys have no idea the emotional journey I went through (in the library due to my lack of internet) in regard to finally giving her a name. She was SO CLOSE to being Lara. I have a whole big beautiful section written up for it and everything. In the end it came down to a very awkward coin toss.
> 
> And then another...
> 
> And then a lot of deliberation...
> 
> And then a lot more.
> 
> I hope you like the chapter. Much of it was written under duress so please be kind.


	41. Chapter 41

Jason measured the passage of time in weather.

 

First there was snow. Alien and oddly frightening. The first days without Dick.

 

Then there was sleet. Ugly, bitter, and icy. The days after that.

 

Finally it started to rain. It rained and rained and rained and rained. An endless downpour that washed the city clean, turned Wayne Estate into bog, and heralded the late arrival of spring.

 

He found he was more at peace in the thunder and water that he had been in the crisp cold quiet of winter. He liked the muddy footprints that made it easy to track his pack. He liked that the wet dampened scents which gave him an excuse to ignore how much like not-clone Tim smelt at nights. But most of all he liked the noise it made at night. The growl of a distant storm, the drumming of water on the window…

 

It filled the empty space of his room. Smothered the silence.

 

When had he become unused to silence? When was the moment when he finally stopped telling Dick to shut up and had accepted the noise the man made? The clatter of his laptop keyboard in the middle of the night. The grunts as he fought for an adequate portion of the blanket. The annoyed speeches he’d make about the drama of the day.

 

The endless white noise that was Dick Grayson.

 

Gone. But that was okay. That was okay because he was coming back.

 

And when he came back Jason would be better. He would get Dick things. Stupid things. Just like the man had asked for. And it didn’t matter if he fucked up because, no matter what, Dick promised he would come back. He would always come back. Jason wasn’t sure why he held such simple faith in the man’s promise. Dick had broken promises before. He’d outright forgotten promises before. But this was one Jason believed in.

 

Not feverishly. Not desperately.

 

But earnestly.

 

_He’s coming back._

 

And he did.

 

The day after the rain stopped.

 

Jason was in the TV room when he saw the motorbike curve gracefully up the driveway. A single rider in black leathers with a blue helmet.

 

He reminded himself it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t the first time he’d caught sight of Dick since he’d decided to take a step back. The beta came every once in a while to talk to Alfred before he left, debrief with Bruce after the trial, and simply sit in content silence with Damian before the boy went back to school. He didn’t seek out or invite Jason into his space during these visits. Jason didn’t inject himself into them either.

 

Just because he was here didn’t mean he was ready to be his again. Just because he was nearby didn’t mean he was _back_. But that was okay.

 

He would come back. Like the moon. He would always came ba—

 

“Hey you.”

 

He sat still. Frozen in place. Inexplicably terrified of what he would see if he turned around to address the man. “Hey.”

 

A pair of arms slid around him. Bicycle leather and beta. “Miss me?”

 

_Like a motherfucking limb._

 

Without another word he seized the front of the man’s clothing and pulled him over the back of the sofa. Muddy boots knocked against the armrest, gloved fingers buried themselves in Jason’s shirt, and an abnormally nervous looking Dick Grayson fell into his lap. Brows drawn, eyes wide, and Adam’s apple bobbing above the collar of his jacket.

 

He’d cut his hair. A lot.

 

Jason ran his fingers through it, made sure there was still enough to grab onto and hold.

 

Dick’s head fell back as Jason found a grip at the back of his skull. A low tempting gasp tumbling from his lips. “Ah… _ah_ _fuck_ Jay.”

 

He used that hold to pull the beta up and crush their lips together. A kiss that was savage, possessive, and nothing like he’d planned to give Dick at this moment. But it didn’t matter. Not just then. All that mattered was tasting him, feeling him, and revealing in the real weight of him across his knees. _Here_. Right where he’d dreamed he’d be.

 

“F-fuck,” he broke the kiss and held them together. Forehead to forehead. “You’re really back right? I’m not just…”

 

“Yeah,” the man breathed, his hands coming up to cup Jason’s face. “I’m here. I know that was a little longer than I’d implied but…”

 

He had no idea how long Dick had been gone. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to find out. All that mattered was that he was back now. After the snow, the sleet, and the rain the simple fulfilment of his faith was like a drink at the end of days lost in the desert. Better because Dick wasn’t necessary for survival. He was what made survival necessary.

 

“You know I spent the last week in an old apartment in Gotham?” The beta rasped as Jason shoved a second kiss onto his lips. “I kept telling myself I was waiting for an assignment from the Titans as if that makes any sense. But really I wasn’t doing anything. Nothing at all. I just…” another kiss. “…kept eating, sleeping, and thinking. I’ve never thought so much in my life…”

 

“Fuck you’re hot,” Jason breathed. Crushed his lips against him again. Another breathless taste.

 

Dick accepted the kiss with a breathless laugh. Soft and low. “You too, Jay. That’s one of the things I kept thinking about. I should have been thinking deep meaningful relationship thoughts – I was – but then some guy would walk by in leather pants I’d be back to thinking about you in leather pants. Or an alpha would be all growly on the phone and I’d think about you growling. Or…”

 

“Marry me?”

 

Dick broke off what he was saying, pulled his face from where it had settled in the crook of Jason’s shoulder, and frowned at him. “You don’t need to ask that, Jay. I still want to marry you. I never stopped wanting to…”

 

“Right now.”

 

“Ri—?” Dick stiffened. His eyes went wide. “What?”

 

“Marry me?” He asked again.

 

“Oh.” A hand fluttered up to cover Dick’s mouth. “ _Oh fuck_.”

 

“We have the piece of paper. We can pay to jump the line at the registry office.”

 

“You’re serious. You’re _actually_ serious.”

 

“We need two witnesses,” he pushed on. “I guess Br—no. He can’t leave the house. Tim’s too young. Fuck it. Let’s just use whatever officials are there. They can witness a wedding, right?”

 

“You’re not kidding.” Dick stared at him. “You want to get married? Now? At a registry office? Without telling anyone?”

 

“Yeah,” he admitted. A confession that felt like it weighed more than it should. “I… I just want to marry you. That’s all I ever wanted. I…” his hand closed into a fist where it rested on Dick’s thigh. “It’s just a piece of paper. A piece of fucking paper.”

 

It seemed so stupid now but when he’d asked Dick to marry him all those months ago his only thought had been for that piece of paper. A document that said they were - and had promised to stay - a pair. He’d never thought about what went into a wedding, the process, or how long it would take to finally be able to look at Dick and call him his husband.

 

When Dick started planning the wedding – when he realised how long it would take and how large it would be – it had felt like being woken up from a dream. Something warm safe and simple disappeared to be replaced with something complex and strange. But also something Dick wanted. The beta wanted the traditions, the ceremony, and the fanfare. So Jason went along with it. He accepted it. Pretended to be a part of it. Because, if he didn’t, Dick would leave.

 

Now Dick had left. Now he’d come back. Now Jason saw the gravitational tether strung between them.

 

Dick was his. So why not just say the words? Why not just have that piece of paper? Why not just… be?

 

“I j-just came back,” Dick stammered. “It hasn’t been two minutes yet and you want to elope? W-what about all the plans? The bachelor parties? The _rings_?”

 

“Later,” he promised. “We’ll do it later.”

 

“You want to have a second wedding,” Dick deducted. “Why? You hated one wedding. Why split it into two? Why not just…” something seemed to occur to him. “Oh… oh shit.”

 

“Come on,” he pulled him tighter against him. “If the press think we’re already married they won’t show up. We can invite people with flaming hair or green skin.”

 

“You could be Jason,” the beta whispered. “We could say vows and you would be Jason Todd. Not Jackson whoever. Jason. I could say ‘I take you, Jason Todd.’”

 

Jason felt a spark of need shoot through him at hearing those words. Not sexual. But something simular. Raw and needy.

 

He stood.

 

Dick yelped in surprise as the motion dumped him unceremoniously on the floor. If he was anyone else the fall would have been graceless. Somehow Dick managed to squeeze in a quick tumble into the landing and rolled back up onto his feet. An acrobat to the end.

 

“What was that fo— _ah_!”

 

Jason seized Dick’s arm and started pulling him through the manor. Alfred and Martha were in Oxford doing whatever two betas did when they were alone, Clark and Lemons were in Smallville making sure the not-clone was okay on his first day back at school, and Bruce was upstairs watching over Tim while the boy was in heat. There was no one. Nothing standing in between him and the registry office.

 

“Oh fuck,” Dick said as he was dragged along behind him. “Oh fuck. Oh fuckity fuck fuck fuck…”

 

But he didn’t resist. He kept stumbling behind him. A willing captive.

 

By the time they got to the garage the beta’s vocab had boarded… if only slightly.

 

“Fuck, how do you do this to me, Jay? Two minutes. I haven’t been here two minutes and I… we’re… fuck. Oh fuck.”

 

The motorbike engine was still warm and it took only one kick for it to roar back to life. Then they were moving. Dick wasn’t wearing his helmet. He wasn’t even wearing a jumper. But suddenly they were outside, then they were on the road, and then they were in Gotham. It was dizzyingly fast. Touching the same taunt cords as sex.

 

“J-Jay…” Dick looked utterly terrified as they abandoned the bike on the street side and started up the steps toward the courthouse. “Y-you know I love you, right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“So this isn’t…?”

 

He growled and kissed him again. Pressed the fury of the feelings inside him onto the man’s lips.

 

Dick shook as he received them. “Oh… oh fuck I… I…”

 

The pedestrians were leaving a large bubble of space around them. Heads down against a chill Jason wasn’t even feeling in his shirt and jeans. No. He was hot. Heart thudding painfully hard in his chest, fist around Dick’s wrist, and sweat forming between his shoulder blades.

 

Dick clung to him as he kissed him again and Jason could smell the sweat, the fear, and the desperation mirrored on the beta. And for the first time he realised this spur of the moment thing he said had changed their lives. Forever. _This is it. This is our wedding day. This man’s going to be my husband._

 

As long as Dick said ‘I do’.

 

He drew back from his kiss, took hold of Dick’s chin, and pushed his face up to study him. His shorter hair showed off the shape of his face, left the height and sculpt of his cheekbones bare, and removed all distractions from around his eyes. There was fear in those eyes. Tight and real. But there was more there. Things that dwarfed the fear. Impossible perfect things.

 

“We’re doing this, aren’t we?” The beta whispered.

 

“I want to,” he told him.

 

“Fuck,” he whispered. His cheeks were red, lips wet, and shoulders shaking. “Fuck.”

 

Jason walked backwards as he pulled him toward the office. Dick walked with him, still tangled in his embrace, feet moving forward as Jason’s moved back. An ugly waltz that they performed until Jason backed through the revolving door.

 

They had to wait for thirty seven minutes.

 

At some point Dick put his hand in Jason’s and didn’t let go.

 

At another Jason stole a flower from the display and put it in Dick’s shirt front.

 

Then they were kissing, then they were in the bathroom kicking the cubicle door closed, and Jason heaved through the strangest most terrified orgasm of his life as Dick’s free hand found its way down his pants. _Ah._ _Fuck anyone who says—_ No. Out loud. This was the kind of thing Dick wanted to hear out loud now.

 

“Fuck anyone who says you ain’t fucking perfect just cause you can’t wear a bite.” The phrase felt heavy and unfamiliar on his tongue. Like a line of memorised poetry instead of a thought he’d picked up from his stream of consciousness.

 

Despite it Dick stopped what he was doing and stared at him with a strange kind of wonder. Then he smiled. A flickering thing that finally broke through the terrified look the man had been wearing and touched his eyes. “You think I’m perfect?”

 

He swallowed. “Yeah.”

 

“Yeah?” Dick echoed.

 

“Yeah…” he pulled open the front of Dick’s pants to return the favour. Found him already hard. “Fuck yeah.”

 

“ _Ah_ ,” the beta buried his face in Jason’s shoulder as he seized him. “Scary isn’t it? When you – _hmm_ – realise someone’s perfect? Even when they’re a- _fuh_ prick sometimes.”

 

“Yeah,” he breathed. An oddly honest moment. “Yeah…”

 

Ten minutes later they walked into an office reeking of sex in motorbike leathers and jeans. But it didn’t matter. Dick was still holding his hand and the piece of paper was still on the desk in front of them. It didn’t look like Jason imagined. For some reason Jason thought it would be huge and handwritten like the Declaration of Independence. It wasn’t. It was a small piece of paper footnoted by two blank lines.

 

Richard John Grayson was written below the right line. A false name was below the left.

 

Perhaps that was why they asked him to sign it first. He did so in a meaningless scribble before passing the pen on to the beta at his side.

 

Dick held it for a long time. The worst few seconds of his life. Then, with a slow grace, he reached down and carefully penned each and every letter of his name in tight practised cursive. Jason held his breath until the tip of the pen finally lifted off the page.

 

And just like that he had a husband.

 

The whole process done without either of them barely having to say a word. He liked it better that way. They could save the big speeches, the ‘I take you Dick Grayson’ and ‘I take you Jason Todd’, until they figured out the ceremony part of this affair. The part with rings, relatives, and public promises. Today was all about the private. Today was all about them.

 

_Today I eloped with Dick Grayson._

 

It didn’t matter if his brain rotted away with old age. It didn’t matter if he spent the rest of his life snorting every type of drug in Gotham. It didn’t matter if someone else bashed his brain in with a crowbar. He would never ever forget that thought. The way it floated across his consciousness. Like a memory even as it happened. 

 

He walked out of that building in a daze, still clinging hand in hand to his new husband. It had started to rain again. The day identical to the previous yet also as different from it as black was from white. If Dick noticed the weather he gave no indication of it. He walked into the downpour, pulling Jason along behind him, and ignored the empty patch of pavement where they’d abandoned the bike. Instead he continued walking across the road and into a small rundown park there. Empty and open. The place where protesters had clashed the day Bruce lost his inheritance.

 

“I don’t know how you can make a day like this magical,” Dick said as they drew to a stop amongst the bushes and trees. “But you can.” He put Jason’s free hand on his hip and rested his own on Jason’s shoulder. “You really can.”

 

Dick stepped back. Jason stepped forward. Dick stepped forward. Jason stepped back.

 

And suddenly they were waltzing.

 

Performing their first dance alone and unobserved in a blanket of rain while their new marriage certificate burnt a hole in the inside of his shirt.

 

A wedding to be jealous of. That’s what Dick had asked for. He wasn’t sure he’d given him that. Their fingers were still naked, their clothes didn’t match, and the flower in Dick’s shirt was fake. Yet for some reason the man held him like it had been everything he’d wanted. For some reason the man was smiling up at him and taking the lead when Jason stumbled. For some reason Dick was laughing, and kissing, and holding, and loving, and happy. For some reason some of the rain on Jason’s cheeks was warm.

 

They got a hotel that night. Something big with golden elevators, room service, and no one above them. Dick showered, cartwheeled around the suite naked, and then straddled Jason on the king sized bed. They didn’t have sex. Not then. They just touched each other, kissed, and talked. For hours.

 

They talked about how much easier Bruce was on Damian and Tim, about Lemon’s new name, and whether they thought Martha and Alfred would turn into something. They talked about Dick stepping down as Batman, how long it would take for Bruce to figure out how to get the anklet off, and Tim’s new fame. Jason waited for Dick to stop laughing when he told him he’d accidentally pack bonded with the not-clone, Dick waited for him to sit back down when he’d told him Ubu had ripped off his clothes, and then they lay together for a while. It was a kind of quiet closeness he wasn’t really used to but relished.

 

It was in that moment that the beta threaded his fingers between Jason’s and asked a question.

 

“Did you have sex with Talia?”

 

He jerked as if he’d just been struck, shocked out of the peaceful place he’d been.

 

“She’s an alpha.”

 

“Yeah,” Dick said softly. “But did you have sex with her? Ubu said a few things and Talia…”

 

He felt his jaw clench. “I don’t care what they said.”

 

Dick squeezed his hand. “Hey. It’s okay. I was just…” he sighed. “Look Jay, the thing is I’m not the world’s greatest detective. Sure, I can do it, but I’m no Bruce. Talia told Ubu not to kill me if I was you and Ubu made a few comments that stuck in my head. I’ve been trying to figure it out and I thought maybe…”

 

“I’d remember if she fucked me.” He would. Of course he would. Even if it happened in the dark time or the time when nothing mattered. He would remember it. Surely. “That’s just some lie the assassins made up because I got shit that they didn’t.”

 

Dick’s frown deepened. “I suppose you were there for a while. They probably…”

 

“I was there for a few months.”

 

The man’s gaze snapped up. “Months? Where did you go after?”

 

“Gotham.”

 

“You came here? After a few months? Why didn’t you come home?”

 

“I did.”

 

“But… No. You were gone for _years_ , Jason.”

 

“I know.” He’d figured that out when Bruce took him back to the cave and he’d seen Dick again for the first time since his resurrection. The lost years etched onto the beta’s face.

 

“Wait,” Dick sat up. “Are you saying you weren’t resurrected until a few months before you came back? No man. That doesn’t make sense. How did your body not decompose? How did you age? How—”

 

“I don’t know,” Jason said. “Doesn’t matter.”

 

“Doesn’t matter? You’re telling me the time – for you – from death to coming back home w…” Dick’s eyes widened. “Oh fuck. How old are you?”

 

“Twenty four.”

 

“But if you missed those years you’re not really twenty four are you.” Not a question. “Oh fuck. You were gone for four years Jason.”

 

“So?”

 

“Twenty four minus four is twenty. If you only remember twenty years of life I’d say that makes you twenty. Minus the fact your birthday is in December so you’re practically nineteen. Which means you were sixteen when we first had sex. And I was twenty three. Which is… oh fuck. I statutory raped you.”

 

“I’m not nineteen,” Jason growled. “Do I look nineteen?”

 

“No. But, fuck dude, if you were dead…”

 

“I was only dead for a year,” he growled. “Then there was a dark time. Then the pit. Then…”

 

“’The dark time’ doesn’t sound uber alive to me,” Dick remarked.

 

“I was alive I was just…” he hesitated. “…I can’t really remember.”

 

Dick’s eyes widened. “Oh hell. I’m a cradle snatcher. I’m a cougar. I belong on ‘Aged Gap Love’. No. Jail. I belong in jail.”

 

“Fuck off,” Jason snarled. “You ain’t no pedo.”

 

“What else would you call it, Jay?”

 

He pushed the man down onto the mattress. Held him with a palm planted in the middle of his chest. “Husband. You’re my husband.” It was the first time he’d said the word aloud. The first time he’d declared it. It was also the first thing he’d ever said that successfully managed to silence Dick.

 

The man stared up at him. Naked, still damp from his shower, and perfect.

 

“Most of my life has been fucked up,” Jason told him. “Most of everything is fucked up. But not being with you. Not one part of it.” They’d screwed up. They’d fucked up. But they had never been fucked up. He didn’t care what twisted maths Dick came up with. “You hear me?”

 

“God, Jay. I… I hear you. I do. But I’m right though aren’t I? You missed time. That’s why you were still so childish a few years ago.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“No,” the beta shook his head. “I didn’t mean it like that. I… oh God.”

 

He studied him. “What if I was sixteen?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“When we first had sex,” Jason told him. “Wouldn’t you have fallen in love with me?”

 

“I wouldn’t have fallen into _bed_ with you,” Dick promised.

 

“Why? It’s legal. Omegas can marry at sixteen.”

 

“ _Just_. And it’s still creepy as fuck.”

 

“You had sex when you were fifteen.”

 

“With another fifteen year old,” Dick pointed out. “That’s different. It’s not like I ever had sex with someone that much older than… no. Okay. I did. But it’s not like I did it when I was a teen… no. Okay. I did that too.”

 

Jason watched him. Waited.

 

“Fuck.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Please just tell me you were nineteen.”

 

“Tell me you would have fallen in love with me anyway.”

 

“I always loved you, Jay. Even when I didn’t I… did.”

 

“Me too,” Jason admitted. “Does anything else really fucking matter?”

 

The beta swore, hooked a hand behind Jason’s neck, and dragged him forward. One more kiss – one more answer – before their hands wandered lower. But even with the man in his hand he knew Dick was still thinking about it. It started slow and soft. The way sex should be the night of a wedding. Then it dissolved into something more _them_. More teeth, more bruises, and more screams. Screams that – if they weren’t in the penthouse – would probably have the GCPD knocking on their door.

 

But it wasn’t the police that burst in on them halfway through the night.

 

It was Tim.

 

“You got married?!”

 

Dick rolled off the bed – desperately trying to pull the bedding up over him – as the omega charged in the door. Jason went for his discarded jeans instead; bunched them into a ball and held them over his crotch when it became clear he didn’t have time to wriggle into them. “What the hell are you doing here, kid?”

 

“What the hell am _I_ doing?” The boy stormed over and showed him his phone. The headline; ‘Dick Grayson’s run away wedding’. The photo; him and Dick kissing in the rain soaked park. “You didn’t invite me to your wedding!”

 

“Hey, kid, I’m s—”Jason gagged as Tim’s scent hit him. “F-fuck kid. You’re in…” He cupped a hand over his nose and mouth.

 

Tim’s face was spotted with sweat, neck red, and hands shaking. In the middle of his heat and popping suppressants like they were tic-tacs. Tim rarely took any suppressants, frightened off by the horror stories Dick would tell of Bruce breaking his heats with industrial grade injections. He must be beyond angry if he was so willingly downing so many now. Even so, they were over the counter drugs and not doing a great job of keeping his heat at bay.

 

“Hell, Timmy,” Dick stood in a toga of bedding. “You _really_ shouldn’t be out of your nest right now. How did you even get here?”

 

“I’m fine,” the boy snapped. Another mouthful of pills. “Bruce used to fight crime on heat.”

 

“Yeah, but he broke his heat first. You’re still scenting.”

 

“No I’m not.” Tim buried his face in the crook of his elbow and inhaled. Frowned. “Oh.” Looked at the bottle of suppressants as if they’d personally wronged him. As if oral suppressants were _ever_ enough stop an omega in heat from scenting. Jesus, hadn’t Bruce even taught him that much?! He smelt like sweat, sweetness, sex... _fuck._

 

His sides were starting to twitch with painful twinges of forced arousal. An ugly involuntary reflex to the pheromones pouring off Tim’s skin. “Get him away from me, Dick.” Horse, low, and spoken through his fingers.

 

It was his wedding night. Tim was the kid. He was a monster.

 

The beta waddled forward – still bound in bedding – and pulled the protesting omega gently back. “Hey Timmy. I’m sorry we didn’t invite you. We didn’t invite anyone. But we’re going to have another wedding. Unofficial but with all the friends and family.”

 

“But _why?_ ” A heartbroken look. “Why couldn’t I come to the real thing? I would have taken suppressants. Good suppressants so I wouldn’t have smelt.”

 

“I know, Timbo. I know. The thing is we didn’t plan on it. It just sort of… happened.”

 

“Couldn’t it have happened with me there? I bought the rings.”

 

“I know you did, Tim. I know.”

 

Even on suppressants an omega still suffered cognitively from a heat. The nights Bruce used to break his heat before going on patrol were terrifying when he was a boy. Batman would be irritable, inattentive, and reckless. Quicker to judge and for the punishment to be crueller. More likely to take risks and to make mistakes. Likewise, Tim’s usually sharp inhibitions and powers of observation were around his ankles. He was speaking louder than Jason was used to and hadn’t seemed to notice they were both naked. But even half mad he’d still managed to track them down, travel across halfway Gotham, and break into their room. Not to mention escape from Bruce.

 

Bruce.

 

Jason groped blindly for the phone, punched in the number, and held it to his ear.

 

It was picked up on the first ring. _“Wayne.”_

 

“Tim just showed up.”

 

Bruce’s voice sounded strange. _“You have him?”_

 

“Yeah.”

 

A breath. Exhausted and relieved. _“Where are you?”_

 

“The Royal Hotel. Penthouse.”

 

A pause. _“The **Royal**?”_ He didn’t think Bruce could sound surprised but there it was. _“How did he get there?”_

 

“Fuck if I know.”

 

 _“That’s half an hour drive,”_ the man pressed. _“He was here three minutes ago.”_

 

“I don’t know, alright!” Jason glanced over to where the beta and the omega were standing in the bathroom. Dick was spraying the hotel’s scent dampening deodorant on the protesting boy. It was for betas and wouldn’t do much against Tim’s pheromones but it was better than nothing. “How the fuck did he get out?”

 

 _“I’m not in the habit of locking omegas in their nests,”_ Bruce said.

 

Stiffly. “Why the fuck not?”

 

_“An omega isn’t a prisoner. I’m not going to force—”_

 

“Force what? Safety? Do you even real—”

 

 _“I realise,”_ Bruce growled. Low. Angry. The sound of the pack leader. _“I realise what’s at stake when an omega goes into heat. Don’t you dare tell me for one second that I don’t.”_

Jason’s hand tightened around the phone. “Then why is he out of his nest?”

_“I did not expect him to leave it. I would never willingly leave a nest in high heat, let alone organise a way to teleport half an hour away from it.”_ A pause. _“But then I was never able to read the news in high heat either. Damnit I didn’t consider his low level. Is he okay?”_

 

“Yeah.” Jason felt oddly cut down more by the man’s concern than his growling. “Yeah he’s fine. Are you coming or—?”

 

Clark appeared in a thunderous rush of air. The alien took one look around, saw the discarded clothes, and sent Jason an apologetic look. “Sorry to, eh, interrupt. I can just take him and get out of here.”

 

“No.” Jason growled and shoved the phone back down on the receiver. “You’re an alpha.”

 

“Heating omegas haven’t bothered me since I mated,” Clark said. “It’s a Kryptonian thing I guess.”

 

Dick. “You _guess?_ ”

 

“Don’t take me back,” Tim wailed. “Bruce makes me eat during my heat.”

 

“You were underweight a week ago,” Clark reminded him.

 

“It’s inhuman! He barely gives me enough time to mast—”

 

“Okay!” Clark scooped up the omega. “Let’s get you out of here before you say something you regret. And out the window, hey? There are a few too many alphas downstairs.”

 

“No,” Tim shook his head. “Not the window. I’ve had suppressants. I’ll throw up.”

 

“Then we’ll stop and let you throw up. No shame in throwing up. Still probably a lot smarter than parading you in front of a lot of alphas right now don’t you think?”

 

“Alphas?” Tim scoffed. “I got here passed all the alphas. Who cares about alphas?” He swivelled to point at Jason. “ _They_ got married. _Married_.”

 

“So I heard.”

 

“Married,” the omega insisted as if by repeating the word Clark would get some new level of understanding. “I had to learn it from Vicki Vale.”

 

Dick stared at Tim in shock. Turned to Clark. “Is this, um, what omegas are usually like in heat? How do you manage it with B?”

 

“Oh _I_ don’t manage _him_ ,” Clark promised. “Not even in heat.”

 

“Stop talking about me as if I’m not here,” Tim huffed. “I’m not heat mad. I’m _angry_.”

 

Clark ignored him. Looking instead between Jason and Dick. “Sorry again guys, and congratulations. Quite the stunt. Runaway wedding. I think it’s safe to say I’m jealous.”

 

“Jealous?” Tim echoed. “You’re jeal—”

 

Clark disappeared, taking Tim with him.

 

“Shit.” Dick dropped his sheet as he bent to pick up Tim’s abandoned phone. “Shit. Okay. That happened.”

 

“Tim walked out of his nest,” Jason muttered, finally dropping his hand from his face. “He walked out of his nest _and travelled halfway across Gotham_. Stupid dumb kid. What if…” he lurched up. Started to pace. “What if someone had taken him? What if he’d crashed? What if— _fuck!_ He could have killed himself. He could have been sold into fucking slavery!”

 

Dick was still flickering through news stories on Tim’s phone. “I think he thought of that.”

 

“You think? He’s in heat Dick! He _doesn’t_ think.”

 

“Look,” the beta approached and offered the phone. “I think he had help.”

 

“Help?” Jason took the phone. Flicked through the open messages. “Who’s Bartman?”

 

“Someone who could protect him, get him here, and disappear all without being spotted or scented,” Dick promised. “He also probably would do it too. Heat or no heat.”

 

Jason flicked back through the messages. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.

 

Tim. _I need a lift._

 

Bartman. _For you babe? Anytime. Though for someone who says he’s not gay you sure spend a lot of time riding my arse._

 

An omega. Good. As bad as the not-clone was at least Jason knew him. At least there was a level of communication there, respect. They could fight side by side and Jason knew if push came to shove Conner would follow him. He also knew the alpha would do anything to look after Tim.

 

He wasn’t sure he could say the same for a new suitor.

 

“Thank God he didn’t just come here,” Dick breathed and slumped back on the bed. “Thank God. Could you imagine him walking like that across the street? Through the lobby? Can you imagine him even driving like that?”

 

Jason didn’t want to imagine that.

 

Dick shook his head and – inexplicably – laughed. A rough breathless sound. “It never ends with this pack does it? We’re always going to court, having half alien babies, or – hell – running away to get married. Now this?” He shook his head. “That doesn’t even bring up the whole terrorist attack, vigilante night job, or the fact that I just found out _on our wedding night_ that you’re ninet—”

 

“I’m twenty four,” he interrupted.

 

“Yeah. Right.” Dick puffed up his cheeks and gently blew it away. “This is never going to end is it? No. I signed the paper. I’m locked into this roller-coaster now. As if I wasn’t already before. As if I’d be able to get off it even if I wanted to.” Another laugh. Equally as throaty and blown away as the last. “Oh God. _Oh God_.”

 

Something about that laugh and those two words began to melt the tight nervous anger Tim’s visit had left him with. He sat down, crawled across the mattress, and pulled the boneless beta up onto the bed beside him. Buried his face in the closest bit of skin he found – turned out to be Dick’s bicep – and breathed in. Bold, beautiful, beta.

 

“Hey… sorry,” Dick touched his hair. “Must be shit smelling him like that.”

 

“I’m fine,” he rasped. _How the hell did I survive his first heat?_ “I just…” another deep breath. “Love you.”

 

Dick’s bottom lip slipped between his teeth as he smiled. “Fuck I love it when you say that. You make this crazy-enough-for-Arkham pack worth it. You really do.”

 

 _And you,_ Jason thought as he pulled him against him, _make everything worth it. Every single goddamned thing._ But there weren’t words enough to make sense of that thought so he left it unsaid. Settled instead with the simplified version.

 

“You too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must apologise for not having replied to everyone's comments from the previous chapters yet. I have been reading them and fully intend to respond to them when I can. In fact I'm really looking forward to it. Things are a little rough financially for me right now (hence the lack of home internet) and it's been really wonderful to receive so much love. Thank you so much. It means a lot.


	42. Chapter 42

It took hours to coax Tim out of his nest. Clark had to promise him Dick and Jason weren’t going to be home for at least a week, that Kon would never hear of this, and that Bruce wouldn’t bring this up ever ever _ever_ again. As it turned out all three of those things were lies. Dick and Jason came home unexpectedly that afternoon to escape the press, Bart spilled the beans to Kon, and Bruce went against his word and mentioned it at the earliest opportunity.

 

Now Tim was treating him as if he were the traitor.

 

The young omega either refused to meet his eye or glared at him, hadn’t set a place for him at the table at dinner, and spent a lot of his spare time playing a game which didn’t seem to be anything more than blowing up aliens.

 

Okay, who even decided it would be okay to have that in the house? He understood the boy was upset but that was just hurtful… and incredibly stereotypical. Not all aliens had massive heads and tentacles.

 

“All I’m saying, Bruce, is you didn’t need to throw me under the bus like that,” he knotted his tie tight under his chin. The movement deliberately smooth. Calm. “You _knew_ I promised him you wouldn’t bring it up.”

 

“He needed to be taught a lesson,” the omega replied simply as he leant over the crib and watched Ellie doze. “He can’t be allowed to think running away during his heat is acceptable behaviour.”

 

“Oh come on. He’s _humiliated_. Pretty much everyone in the pack smelt him heating, he personally ruined Dick and Jason’s wedding night, and threw up in Gotham Central Park. Isn’t that punishment enough?”

 

The omega’s jaw shifted. “He ran away Clark. I’m not taking any chances.”

 

“You know,” he raked his fringe down over his brow and gathered up his reporter bag, “technically, he didn’t run away. He was kidnapped.” Omegas couldn’t give consent during heat. As far as Clark was concerned that wasn’t just sexual content but all kinds of consent. Bart had come in and whisked Tim away without his full awareness or permission. The young speedster’s infamous sticky fingers and flare for mischief striking again. What was worse was, unlike Tim, Bart didn’t seem in the least contrite for his part in this. Clark had listened to Barry’s exhausted attempts to punish the boy and his almost pleading explanations as to why he couldn’t keep doing stuff like this.

 

For his part Bart had absently promised he wouldn’t do it again before running away from his grounding to steal a barrel of ice-cream and hang out with the Teen Titans.

 

Clark was quietly thankful that Tim and Conner at least seemed to fully understand the dangers of what happened.

 

In fact they both seemed horrified.

 

Which was why Bruce’s insistence on giving Tim the lecture seemed just a little bit cruel. Especially when Clark had promised the boy it wouldn’t happen.

 

“You’re too hard,” he said. Thought of how Bruce had snapped at Damian when the boy had yelled at Kon and how abruptly Bruce had accepted Kon into the pack. No fanfare. No excitement. Not the kind of welcome he’d seen happen on TV. “With all of them. It doesn’t hurt to show a little bit of empathy here or there. A little bit of compassion. Sometimes they know they’ve made a mistake and just being told they’ve messed up isn’t helpful. Sometimes they just need someone to talk to.”

 

Bruce didn’t answer at first. Gently tucking in blankets around the sleeping baby. Finally he straightened, turned to Clark, and fixed him with a strangely passive stare. “Why bother? I train them. I push them. I’m never going to be the favourite dad. Not with you around.”

 

“That’s not tr…” he trailed off as he realised what the other man had said. His irritation forgotten. “You think they think of me as dad?”

 

“Conner certainly does,” Bruce answered. “Damian’s getting there, though I doubt he’ll ever call you father. Tim maybe. You missed your chance with Dick and Jason.” His eyes were hard. Masked. “We both did.”

 

“No, Bruce…” he approached.

 

The omega held up his hand, warding away the embrace. “It is for the best. They have found a family with each other now. They are happy.” Softly. “That’s all that matters.”

 

Clark watched uncertainly as the man set up the baby monitor, clipped the receiver onto his belt, and drifted out of the room. Eyes dark and stormy. _Dammit_. He was brooding. If he didn’t have a baby to take care of he’d probably be sitting down in the darkest corner of the batcave. He was probably going there now.

 

Clark shouldn’t have tried to have this fight now.

 

“Hey,” he zipped down the corridor and floated beside him as Bruce moved. “You know Dick and Jason know you love them, right?”

 

Low. “Yes.”

 

“And you know, even though I’m angry at you for saying all that stuff to Tim, I love you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And Ellie loves you.”

 

Bruce made a noise. “She’s a baby, Clark. She loves milk and milk comes from me.”

 

“Even so…”

 

Bruce sighed and pinched his brow. “You’re going to be late for your interview.”

 

“But…”

 

“Go, Clark.”

 

Clark felt helpless but he obediently let the man wander off. Their life had been as rocky as a mountain rage recently. Everything coming up in jagged highs and gut churning lows. From the eager buzz that had hung around the pack after their victory over the court to the chore of getting all the boys back to school with a tracking band around Bruce’s ankle. From watching Bruce slowly build on his new bond with Damian to seeing him struggle in turn with the daughter he obviously loved but who obviously still overwhelmed him. From rediscovering the pleasures of flying with the League to grimly realising how frustrating it was for Bruce to be sitting on the sidelines.

 

From thinking they finally had everything under control to Tim being in heat, out of his nest, and running around the far side of Gotham.

 

It was a stressful time and all of it ensured there was never really going to be a moment where they could be left alone by the world to make sure the emotional wounds from Talia were gone. But, Clark had come to realise, for Bruce at least Talia would never be gone. There was history between them he didn’t understand. A connection he couldn’t even begin to fathom especially considering what she had done to him both in the past and more recently.

 

They were secrets that were Bruce’s to keep or to share. Ones Clark didn’t have the right to demand.

 

He tried to console himself with the knowledge that the connection Bruce had with him was different. It was healthy for a start. And not just for Bruce but for him as well. When he’d first realised Bruce was omega he had a lot of preconceived notions about what an omega was and what Bruce as an omega would require of him. Ideas that he could see now were frankly ridiculous. Omegas were people. They were each of them no different than the betas and alphas he had known. Bruce wasn’t a ‘special’ or ‘different’ omega, he was a person. Like any person Bruce’s needs were his own. Both those that could be seen as typical of his caste and those that weren’t.

 

As a rule he’d also been weaker when it came to relationships. Clark was used to being strong and privileged in every aspect of his life. It seemed like the polite thing to do to put himself second when it came to their partnership especially seeing the sheer amount of emotional scars Bruce brought to the table. Also ridiculous. A habit of his that – paired with Bruce’s aggression and naturally prickly nature – had almost ended their early relationship.

 

He needed to be sensitive and kind when dealing with some of his mate’s issues but that was not the same as putting himself down a peg. He knew that now. But no matter how much growth he’d made in Bruce’s arms he knew the other man had made more.

 

He didn’t know the details. He wasn’t privy to much of what went on in Bruce’s past. He didn’t know the full extent of what had happened between him and Talia. He didn’t know what had happened between him and the other alphas such as Bane and Silva St Cloud. He didn’t know why Bruce as a boy already hated being an omega so much he decided to pretend for the rest of his life to be a beta. He didn’t know why Bruce had felt the need to throw up so many walls when Clark first circled into his orbit as a prospective sexual partner…

 

But there were worlds of difference between the man Bruce was then and the one he was now.

 

He’d always been strong – so unspeakably perfectly strong – but there was a confidence in his own strength that had bloomed over the last five years. A confidence that manifested in a number of ways. When Clark bottomed for Bruce in the bedroom it felt like Bruce was doing it for the taboo thrill of dominating him not because he was trying to prove something. When Bruce was challenged he didn’t mimic and alpha – hunch forward and hold his arms out from his hips – the way he used to. And while he was still learning the ropes when it came to being a father he didn’t flinch away from the role as if it were something degrading; as if there were some great shame in being an omega parent.

 

Though, as far as parenthood went, Bruce’s speech to Tim made Clark realise the omega was probably always going to be the tough one and him the pushover.

 

Maybe he should let this one slide and just quietly buy the boys a game where they blew up black cloaked vampires instead. At least that would be a way to gage the ever shifting popularity between them in the pack.

 

His phone buzzed.

 

A text from Lois.

 

_Are you coming?_

 

He answered with two words.

 

_Look up._

 

He made sure all his gear was secure, popped open a nearby window, and floated up as gently as he could into the morning air. He didn’t want to disturb his clothes on his short flight over the grounds and down to where a battered old car waited for him just outside Wayne Estate’s imposing fence. Even so he flew into sight just as Lois read the text and looked up from where she was perched in the driver’s seat.

 

“It’s still weird seeing you fly in civvies,” she said as pushed open the passenger side door for him. “But in all seriousness, Smallville, what took you so long? Was it the little super-bat?” An almost hopeful look.

 

He knew she wanted gossip. Or, perhaps she wanted to see him pull a line of photos out of his wallet and gush over his girl. If he was honest both were tempting options. The further they got away from the horror of Leviathan the more time he had to thrill at the presence of his daughter in the world. A tiny living breathing piece of him and Bruce.

 

He still couldn’t really wrap his head around her. They’d done that. They’d made that.

 

But he just shook his head instead. “B’s a little upset.” Not entirely true. Not entirely false.

 

Lois’s brow pleated. “Ah. Baby blues? It’s tough. We’ll do this and then you can get back there and comfort the hell out of him.”

 

“Thanks for staying on this side of the fence this time,” Clark said as she popped the car into gear.

 

She’d phoned him up that morning telling him she was in Gotham and had a story she could bump off onto him. He didn’t know if Lois felt guilty for invading the manor at a time when the pack and the family really shouldn’t have been disturbed or if she – like him – genuinely missed hanging out. Either way he appreciated the gig. His reporting had fallen a little off the radar recently and he wanted to jump back on that horse before his name slipped out of the limelight entirely.

 

It was right up his alley.

 

_Lex Luthor Speaks Out About Batman Inc._

 

He didn’t know if it would be political, economic, or another one of the man’s rages against superheros. Either way, despite effectively being a celebrity piece, it would be a story he could sell. One that would appeal to his readers and would probably be picked up by a newspaper or two if it was any good.

 

The least he could do was let Lois drive him there while they caught up in earnest. She told him about the ongoing dramas of the Daily Planet, lamented about her love life, and coyly commented about Superman’s semi frequent forgetting of his cape recently. Bruce found if Ellie was upset it was easier to bundle her in Clark’s cape than a normal blanket. The scent of him sticking to the material enough to convince her both her dads were close even when Clark was flying away.

 

He didn’t mind. It was a useful tool to have on the field but there was also a piece of mind to be found in knowing the most precious thing in the world was bundled in cloth that could repel lava.

 

He kissed Lois on the cheek when they arrived at their destination and clambered out of the car, enjoying the human feeling of arriving via road. The Lexcorp division in Gotham was fairly new and had been built with the intention of being the tallest building to occupy the iconic gothic skyline. That plan had been stopped when the Historical Society complained about obstructing the view from Old Wayne Tower and Bruce had – perhaps vindictively – bought out the air above the construction site.

 

Even so he had no doubt Lex’s ego would have brushed aside these annoyances if the company hadn’t come under scrutiny again as the man barely sidestepped another felony conviction.

 

Now it was an impressive fixture… if not stunted.

 

Inside all the workers manning reception wore identical grey suits with tight fitting pencil skirts or pants trimmed in the Metropolis fashion. This trend fell away as he travelled to the higher levels of the building where he found scientists, accountants, and researchers bundled away in cubicles, then departments, and finally offices on the upper levels. The penthouse and Lex’s office were one in the same.

 

It was odd seeing Lex in a suit. The last time he’d interviewed him he’d been wearing orange.

 

If this phased the man he didn’t show it.

 

“Kent. Good. I’m glad they didn’t send Lane.”

 

Lois asked questions Lex didn’t like. Clark didn’t bother. The man had a habit of showing his worst colours all by himself.

 

That was what made him so dangerous. He made no pretences of hiding what he wanted or his intensions no matter how deplorable they were. As such he’d built up his ‘one honest businessman’ image. People listened to him because no matter how many times he did things that should make any normal person turn away he rarely outright lied and could usually blanket any crime with the pretence of ‘for my people’ or ‘for my planet’.

 

It took him a few minutes to sit down, set the camera onto the tripod, and pop the earbud into his left ear. His last interview he hadn’t monitored the sound and the distortion had made most of it a pretty horrendous listening experience. Not this time. He wanted to attach bits of this interview in video format to his article. Something he’d been doing with natural disasters but never with more people based stories. Recently he’d realised there was a demand for it as few people had the time or the patience to sit down and read a whole article without something else to amuse them.

 

Welcome to the multimedia age.

 

He turned the camera and frowned. That was strange. He’d formatted the card before he put it away. It shouldn’t have any data on it. But it did.

 

He checked the folders. Nothing. Checked the source files. Empty as well. Checked the recycling bin…

 

Lex cleared his throat. Clearly annoyed at having been asked to wait.

 

Clark stuttered an apology and quickly fed him the first question.

 

The man’s face twitched toward a small satisfied smile as he took note of Clark’s apparent nervousness. Clark wasn’t surprised. He was an alpha; one who years ago Bruce had pointed out was a higher level than Lex. No doubt the man took some small pleasure out of establishing himself as the more powerful out of the two of them. “A fine question Kent. Batman Inc. is unfortunately just another prime example of alien culture injecting itself into our society…”

 

Clark quickly pressed play on the camera. But he was still in the recycling bin and instead of recording a deleted video popped up and began to screen.

 

He should have swiped it away. Should have scrambled to ensure he was recording the interview.

 

Bruce’s voice stopped him.

 

_“Hello Clark. Merry Christmas.”_

 

His mate’s low baritone rumbling right into his ear. Right where the earbud had landed.

 

His eyes flicked away from Luthor to look at the playback on the camera screen. _Oh_. Bruce. Naked Bruce. Pregnant naked Bruce.

 

He sucked in a sharp intake of air. Lex noticed and nodded sagely.

 

“Shocking isn’t it? The kind of depravity which is so openly excused merely because the front of the endeavour is an omega…”

 

An omega who was heaving that gorgeous bloated body into positon on the mattress. Oh fuck. This was the porno. Hadn’t Bruce said he never made it? Had he lied? It had been deleted. Maybe he made it and was embarrassed. In which Clark should definitely not be watching this.

 

But he was.

 

He could barely keep his eyes on Lex long enough to be polite before letting his gaze snap back to the screen where Bruce seemed to be hesitating. Why Clark couldn’t imagine. He was the most erotic thing in the world even without the firm triangular breasts Clark had been enjoying a little too much lately. Instead in the video his nipples were swollen and red above the lumpy mound of his pregnancy which was large enough to arch his back and accentuate the new wealth of his ars—Hell. Thank God for his baggy pants because his cock had just started paying attention. That was probably a sure sign that he should really swipe the video off screen and start listening to Lex before this got any…

 

_“Fuck.”_

 

Bruce ran his fingers through his hair and in an instant he was no longer sexy, he was scared.

 

Clark stared, his excitement and the interview forgotten.

 

 _“I’m sorry, Clark,”_ Bruce said. _“I just… I’m really distracted right now.”_ Spoken in a voice more raw and honest than Clark was used to hearing. _“You see, you said you would be home soon and now Damian’s missing and Talia…”_

 

Oh. Oh no. He’d filmed this during Clark’s absence. Of course he did. There was no other possible time he could have. But it hadn’t occurred to Clark when he’d first seen his mate’s cocky smile as he climbed naked onto their bed.

 

It wasn’t arousal he was feeling anymore. It was guilt, horror, and a whole range of other emotions sitting low and lumpy in his gut.

 

 _“I don’t know where she is. I know she has you because if she doesn’t have you that means she…”_ Bruce’s face broke for a fraction of a second before he recomposed it into a resolute mask. _“I know she has you,”_ he said the words like a man making a promise. _“I’ll find her. I’ll find you. I’ll find Damian.”_ Looked at the camera. At Clark. _“You’re going to come home. I know that. That is why I’m making this. Because I know you’re coming home.”_

 

There. That moment. It would be one he remembered forever. Sitting in that office, staring at that tiny tinny camera monitor, and meeting eyes with a man who loved him. Loved him so much that the word felt laughably inadequate. Not when paired with the look on his mate’s face.

 

He knew in that moment whatever connection Bruce had with Talia was pale and dead compared to the one he had with him.

 

Bruce looked aside and visibly gathered himself. When he turned back to the camera he was smiling as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t just spilt his heart out naked and alone in his bedroom. _“Merry Christmas, Clark.”_

 

“Bruce…”

 

“Exactly,” Lex said, seemingly pleased he’d voiced the man’s name. “Bruce Wayne just goes to prove this theory. He’s an omega that has violently rejected all reputable alpha advances, even alphas that he should be swooning at the idea of possibly being partnered with. We now know this is because he is mated with The Batman. Batman is another human that has allied themselves with…”

 

Bruce was touching himself, apparently intent on creating his porno. He had no idea why. After witnessing what he just did Clark would need someone to inject him with blood before he had any hope of getting hard. Obviously Bruce was having the same trouble and after a while gave up on his reluctant erection and transferred a hand around push a finger into his arse.

 

Clark could have told him he wasn’t ready for that. He’d come to be very well acquainted with Bruce’s body over the years and the man on the screen before him was displaying none of the ticks that would suggest he was even the slightest bit wet. Sure enough the man flinched but persisted for an agonising while longer before slumping down onto the bed in surrender.

 

 _“Fuck Clark…”_ He closed his eyes and a keen dry longing danced across his features. _“Fuck…”_

 

Not a porno. No. But something better. A window into a moment he would never have otherwise known. A portrait of his mate he had never before seen. Something intimate to a degree he knew Bruce wouldn’t like that he’d been privy to it. But still he couldn’t look away even in the last few seconds as Bruce rolled his heavily ballooned body onto its knees, crawled toward the camera, and turned it off. The blackness of the screen a stilling and sudden full stop.

 

Bruce would die one day. It was a fact Clark spent his life avoiding but also quietly preparing for. At the absolute most he had another fifty years with his mate. Once he was gone, despite what the omega might desire for him, Clark doubted he would ever take another. Not only would he be at an age then where everyone else on the planet was young enough that their coupling could be called paedophilia – their life experience and expectation far estranged from his own – but Bruce was his mate. His partner. His other.

 

Gifts like this were what could fortify him in the years after Bruce was gone. Not just the video which he knew he would transfer onto crystals and store forever but also the moment he’d experienced while watching it. It went with other such moments scattered across their knowing of each other.

 

The moment he’d first seen Bruce. A black winged demon crouched on a stone gargoyle.

 

The moment he’d first seen his face during a mission in their mid to late twenties when they were both too stupid to realise the other was trying to help.

 

The moment eight months later when he’d spotted Bruce chasing Catwoman – an alpha chasing an omega – from orbit and realised _oh fuck I’m attracted to him_.

 

A year later when he’d finally been allowed to attach the name ‘Wayne’ onto the man he knew and discover with shock that he wasn’t an alpha after all but a beta. A rich beta who liked to show up to parties with omega supermodels.

 

The day after where he realised that didn’t stop him being attracted to him. Not for a moment.

 

Years later when they created the Justice League and Bruce fought with him over every single decision but frustratingly never once shot down Diana’s ideas.

 

The moment after they’d defeated Darksied for the first time when Bruce seemed to want to tell him something… then didn’t.

 

The first time he’d been invited inside Wayne Manor which had been cleaned to a point of scentlessness by what he and the League had assumed was just an overzealous butler.

 

Desperately trying to convince the man to stay in the Watchtower medical bay after the man had cracked his skull on a mission.

 

Standing at Bruce’s side and shaking hands with a blushing Robin… and then what felt like only a few years later having a handshake refused by another Robin.

 

Lying in bed after Lois broke up with him and realising Bruce – who he barely spoke to – was his best friend in the world.

 

Perversely having sex with a female omega and thinking _this is what Bruce likes best._

 

And then…

 

That fateful day when for the first time ever he convinced Bruce to come out with the Justice League after the man had given his ‘busy’ ultimatum. It had felt like some kind of validation on their near two decades of knowing each other. A long belated acknowledgement of how close they had come over the years. Perhaps that was what drove him to follow Bruce down to the hanger after the battle that day. Maybe, he’d thought, Bruce wanted to spend some time hanging out outside of battle like they had before Bruce had kids. Maybe they could get some food together some time. Maybe…

 

But the man had been acting strangely. Twitchy, aggressive, unhinged. He’d also hugged his side as if in pain. Only when Clark looked through his skin expecting to see a broken hip or a bullet lodged between his ribs he saw a uterus and two ovaries swollen with heat.

 

The moment he’d discovered Bruce Wayne was an omega.

 

In the most disrespectful way possible.

 

His memories follow that event weren’t pleasant ones. Not until – days later – Bruce had shown up to his apartment and asked him to bite his neck. He’d just been outed as an omega and wanted some kind of shield against the hundred thousand alphas lining up at ‘the seven billion dollar omega’s door’. Knowing the man trusted him that much, especially after what happened both in the Watchtower and after, was a beautiful feeling. Another gem he’d hold onto for all time.

 

Contrary to his own expectations the first time they had sex – while incredible – wasn’t necessarily something he treasured. Perhaps that was why the video that had now fallen into his possession was more personal and more precious than any porno could have been.

 

Because the moments he treasured weren’t of lust. They were of love and life.

 

That bizarre scene in the restaurant when the man had told him he loved him, the even more estranged insistence it was true a few months later on his birthday, and the earth stopping moment when – on the eve of his heat – Bruce had given him his birth control and asked him for a baby.

 

The moment he had told Bruce he was pregnant and the man had sent him an utterly terrified look, the time when he stood by his mate as Bruce admitted he was omegaphobic and starting putting himself together in the wake of that revelation, and Ellie’s birth… there were no words to describe that. Not in all the languages he knew. But through it all he’d loved Bruce… and Bruce loved him.

 

He so often thought about his love for Bruce. He rarely lingered on the knowledge of the man’s feelings for him beyond the thrill at knowing they were there.

 

The thing was, Bruce was the only person he’d been with whom he’d never pursued. He’d been attracted to the man for years but that attraction was never encouraged or fed. Why would it be? Throughout all his different understandings of Bruce Wayne in the early years there had always been barriers that made their relationships seem impossible. First he was a heterosexual alpha, then a beta billionaire who clearly wasn’t looking for someone like him, and finally an omega on the run. Hunted and hurt by alphas from every angle. It wasn’t until the man was fucking him did he realise Bruce was sexually attracted to him. It wasn’t until the man told him he loved him that he realised Bruce felt the same way he did. In many ways Bruce was the aggressor when it came to their relationship.

 

And Bruce took things slow. Very slow.

 

They’d known each other for years before they were friends. They were friends for years before they started having sex. They were having sex for what felt like an age before they were in a relationship. They were in a relationship for years before they even broached the topic of a baby.

 

Perhaps that was why he never really pondered Bruce love. He hadn’t thought about what Bruce felt as much because Bruce led the way. And the slow rate by which he did so made him think perhaps Bruce didn’t feel as strongly as he did. In some stupid shallow far off part of his brain he’d quietly held onto the theory that Bruce couldn’t really love him as much as he loved Bruce… _stupid stupid stupid._

 

He lurched to his feet. “I have to go.”

 

Lex balked and him then scowled. “We’re in the middle of an interview, Kent.”

 

“I-I’m so sorry, Mr Luthor. I can’t…” he crammed the camera back into its bag, folded up the tripod in record time, and fled the room as the businessman yelled curses behind him. He didn’t care. All he cared about was getting out of this building as fast as possible.

 

The elevator took an age to arrive and even longer to take him to the lobby. From there he walked a little faster than a human could to shove through the revolving front doors and bolt passed where Lois was leaning against her car smoking.

 

“Hey, that was fast. How did it…?”

 

“Can you do it? I…” he was gone already. Running across the road and into an alleyway. Then he flew. He flew and flew and flew and flew.

 

He flew until he crashed through the cave waterfall and thundered down to where Bruce was sitting by the computers but frowning down at the baby monitor.

 

The omega’s eyes snapped to him as Clark gathered him up and pulled him in for a frantic kiss.

 

He wriggled away. “Clark! What the he—”

 

He kissed him again. “I love you. I’m here. I love you. Oh God, I love you.”

 

Annoyed. “You made me aware of that some time ago. Shouldn’t you be interviewing Luthor?”

 

“You’re so beautiful. You are. And perfect. And you love me. And I lov—”

 

A legitimately concerned look flashed across the man’s gaze. “You didn’t eat or drink anything did you? If Luthor’s mind controlled you…”

 

“I’m fine,” he promised. “It’s just…” he didn’t want to tell the man about the video. He knew Bruce would ask him to delete it and while they had started training him to resist Bruce’s orders he didn’t trust himself not to follow direct and earnest instruction quite yet. “…realised how much I love you.”

 

Still suspicious. “You just realised that did you?”

 

“Yeah,” he breathed, studying Bruce and memorising exactly how he was in that moment. “I did. So I came here. I’m here. I’m right here.”

 

“I can se—”

 

He kissed him again. Kissed him and kissed him until Bruce staggered over to the batcomputer, pressed a couple of buttons to stop whatever it was he was doing, and looked at Clark’s groin with unapologetic want.

 

What followed was one of the stranger sex sessions of his life.

 

When Bruce reached into Clark’s pants he had protested. _This isn’t what I came here for. You’re still recovering. It’s okay if you don’t want to. I don’t need this._ But Bruce was insistent.

 

Standing by the batcomputer, clutching each other together in a messy inelegant embrace, they released their quickly mounting erections. Bruce grasped Clark. Clark grasped Bruce. They each gave each other what they knew they liked. Bruce hard, tight, and fast. Clark in long steady strokes that touched his knot as often as his head. A simple and incongruous exchange of pleasure.

 

It took until the peak of orgasm for Clark to realise why this felt so strange. He hadn’t been able to stand with Bruce as they were for a long time. Not face to face, chest to chest, hip to hip. Not with Bruce’s pregnancy between them. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it. He never wanted to leave it. He never—

 

His orgasm hit him fast and hard. Like a fist.

 

He moaned, coated Bruce’s hand, and leaned in to quickly nip at the man’s neck when it was done. The omega warded him away with a growl. “Don’t be greedy, Kent.”

 

“Wouldn’t dream of—oh God.”

 

Bruce pushed his hand off him and dropped slowly to his knees. There he used his tongue to clean Clark in drags and swipes that would have been painful to anyone else. They very near where against the hypersensitive skin of his newly inflated knot. But the sight of it alone was enough to jerk a few extra pearls from his tip.

 

Bruce stayed doing that long after Clark was well and truly clean; ignoring the semen splattered on his hand. After a while he opened the front of his shirt and put on quite the show touching and letting Clark touch his breasts. It was oddly exhibitionist for the man and Clark didn’t understand it until ten months later when he went on his first deep space mission since Ellie’s birth.

 

He was just journeying past the outer reaches of the solar system, already missing the smell of dinner he’d left at the manor, when the computer on the ship deck activated. It was a location encrypted file that wouldn’t be accessible or even visible any closer to Earth. It was also protected by a Kryptonian puzzle which when completed revealed the audio password ‘I_am_batmans_alpha_bitch’.

 

He’d lifted an eyebrow at that one.

 

When he dutifully spoke the words into the computer and opened the file he lifted the other eyebrow.

 

_You dirty old man._

 

It was a video compilation of them fucking. All secretly filmed over the last few months and starting with that time in the batcave. That scene was followed by him sucking Bruce one week later in the shower as the man smiled knowingly at the hidden camera. Not all of their sexual encounters. Not close. But enough to pack up a solid couple of hours of highlights ending with Bruce as he was now; back in shape, breasts starting to shrink, and covered with the tell-tale bruises and scrapes that spoke of nights spent on patrol. He was sitting on Clark, pinning him down into the floor of their bedroom, and riding his cock like his life depended on it. An event that had happened not twenty hours before.

 

 _I take back everything I ever said about you not being a good gift giver._ He was going to have a hard time topping this one. Though he supposed forcing Bruce to say something along the lines of ‘I am Superman’s sugar daddy’ was a pretty steep incentive. Though no way Bruce wouldn’t catch him if he tried to film them having sex. He’d need to think of something else. Maybe steal Diana’s lasso…? No. No no no. Bad idea. She’d catch him and force him to explain what he was doing. Besides, sex in the lasso couldn’t be very romantic what with all the involuntary ‘I’m hungry’, ‘you’ve done that better before’, and ‘I hope this doesn’t take too long because I just remembered there is something I want to watch on TV’.

 

No. No lasso. But perhaps some other kind of magical rope… something he couldn’t break… or – more accurately – something he could pretend he couldn’t break…

 

He’d worry about that later. Right now digital Bruce was getting eaten out by digital Clark. His face moving in a way that suggested he’d forgotten for a moment that the camera was there.

 

With a defeated groan Clark began to touch himself while watching the broken breaths and snarls as Bruce was pushed toward orgasm. _You beautiful perfect man. I’ll get you for this. And I love you._

_I love you so much._


	43. Chapter 43

There’s a difference between a marriage and a wedding.

 

A marriage is a legal document.

 

A wedding is a ceremony.

 

Dick and Jason’s wedding was held a year and four days after their marriage. It happened on the edge of Wayne Estate, nestled up against the trees. A spot far enough away from the manor that the building didn’t loom over the occasion and close enough to the cliffs that the smell of sea spray undercut the long arm of Gotham’s smog.

 

Dick insisted the tents were arranged in a pattern only he could see, lit up the forest with an obscene amount of fairy lights, and had one of the rose gardens uprooted and moved three feet to the left.

 

In the end it had required superpowers to get everything the way he wanted it but, Bruce grimly admitted, the result had been worth it.

 

Dick and Jason said their vows under a purple sky, the best man speeches were made informally in the smallest pavilion – Tim’s performed with blazing red cheeks after Barbara’s far more ribald address – and dinner a stuffed spit roast cooked in the open air. Bruce could barely choke down a bite.

 

There were four wedding cakes. Wally ate two.

 

By the time they made it to the dancefloor everyone was too distracted to notice Bruce slip off to settle himself down in a secretive corner of the pavilion. A booth table behind a stack of flowers and a bowl of floating candles. From there he could see Colin and Damian duck into hiding under one of the tables, Alfred nervously counting the guests, and Jason pull Dick out onto the dancefloor. Their second first dance. A strangely intimate thing to watch which didn’t stop even as the song changed and others joined them.

 

He motioned to the wait staff crisscrossing the space like dancers in a regency ballroom. White shirts and black bow ties. Another waiter stepped in front of the one he had called. A young alpha that bounced like a puppy, eager to serve.

 

“Get me wine,” he told the man who – obviously very aware of who he was talking to – hurried to obey. When he returned it was with white, though Bruce would have preferred a glass of red. He took the golden liquid anyway and dismissed the alpha with a wave of his hand.

 

He was halfway through the drink when he was interrupted.

 

“Care to dance?”

 

Bruce looked up.

 

Clark’s broad grin beamed down at him. The man was wearing his glasses though for what purpose Bruce couldn’t fathom. There was no one here who didn’t either know he was Superman or wasn’t having their perception of the party edited by the Martian.

 

“I don’t dance,” he reminded the man.

 

Ellie sat in the crook of Clark’s elbow watching the party with wide blue eyes. She was looking more and more like Clark every day. Both the colour and shape of her eyes belonged to him, as did the half curl of her hair. Like Superman, her cheeks would be hollow and cheekbones high.

 

But unlike Conner she wasn't all Clark. She’d inherited Bruce’s slightly too strong jaw, had lips he couldn’t place, and a chin that matched his mother’s. All of it perfectly blended together. His Pup.

 

He looked pointedly at the infant, at his watch, and raised his eyebrows at Clark.

 

The man’s grin turned sheepish. “I know we said eight but I didn’t want to send her to bed just yet.”

 

“It’s ten.”

 

“We were having fun.”

 

“You’re hopeless,” Bruce said. _And you, Pup, don’t know how lucky you are to have him._ Not many parents would willingly forsake a wedding to entertain a baby all evening.

 

“I’ll put her to bed after this,” Clark promised. “But first…” His hand didn’t retreat. Inclined towards him in inescapable invitation. “You sure you don’t want to dance? It’ll be fun. Just the three of us.”

 

Bruce didn’t answer that, downed the sickeningly sweet wine. Motioned to the eager alpha waiter for another.

 

Clark’s smile slipped as he took note of the exchange and watched Bruce gulp down a healthy portion of the next glass. Drinking not like he drank when playing the role of playboy billionaire – not spilling, sloshing, or splashing his drinks – but actually consuming. Drinking with the intent to get drunk.

 

“Hey,” the man settled down onto the booth beside him. “Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

Clark’s eyes followed Bruce’s gaze to where Jason and Dick were swaying back and forth in the middle of the dancefloor. Heads, chests, and toes together. As they watched Jason whispered something in Dick’s ear and the beta stifled a laugh in the alpha’s shoulder.

 

With a sigh he moved closer and pushed a comforting kiss onto Bruce’s cheek. “They’re good for each other, Bruce. I know it might not seem like it all the time but just think about how far they’ve come. And I’m not just talking about Jason.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Lord knows they love each other.”

 

Low. “I know.”

 

“They’re happy. Happier than I think I’ve ever seen them.”

 

“Dammit, Clark. I know.” He rubbed at the sweat on his neck and gave himself another mouthful of wine. The taste sweet, sticky, and foul.

 

Thankfully the alpha didn’t push the issue. Instead he just pressed his body against him, a support. Bruce leant gratefully into it as he watched the husband pair continue their slow rhythmless shuffle.

 

 _They’ve finished growing up,_ he thought. _And now they’re growing away._

 

They weren’t the only ones.

 

Tim had been accepted into MIT and had just finished his first semester with a major in bio-chemical engineering. The boy – _man_ Bruce reminded himself – had shocked everyone this year by finally capitalising on his surprisingly persistent fame and doing a photoshoot with Gotham’s leading young adult celebrity magazine. All the proceeds went to the Wayne Foundation and all his – still teenage – fans went wild. The segment titled ‘ _Beauty, Brains, and Billions. Oh my!_ ’ sold out.

 

The following story _‘they Photoshoped out my bond mark’_ broke hearts.

 

If any of this phased Conner he didn’t show it. The young alpha hadn’t hesitated to follow his new mate to Boston where he was eagerly trying to break into early age childcare. A passion he’d found during the months babysitting and willing Ellie over.

 

He was an alpha, a high level alpha, and Bruce doubted very much he would be able to find work in that field. But, if anyone could do it, it was him. Clark after all had managed to charm his way into an almost exclusively beta profession before caste equal opportunity employment laws started to come into effect. Why not an alpha into an almost exclusive omega role? The Kents were nothing if not rulebreakers.

 

Jason, for his part, didn’t waste much time try to break perceptions on the alpha caste in the workforce. Neither did Dick. They had both inherited enough money to live comfortably off interest and investments without ever the need to work. Instead they focused on their retrospective superhero careers. Careers that were slowly but surely taking them further and further away from the manor.

 

Further and further away from him.

 

But that was okay. They were each of them leading their own lives. Just as Ellie and Damian would grow up to do.

 

It was happy, sad, and something to get drunk to.

 

“Dada!” Ellie held out her arms. When he didn’t immediately abandon his wine and reach for her she fixed him with the ‘baby bat glare’ and tried again. “Da _da!_ ”

 

Bruce sighed, set down his glass, and scooped her out of the Kryptonian’s embrace. Secretly pleased he nuzzled her under his jaw. Reaffirming their bond. She wriggled against him until she’d settled into a place where she could watch the party. She stayed like that for a few minutes before – growing bored – she lifted her arms to Clark.

 

“Papa!”

 

They were the only two words she knew and used them ruthlessly. Unless something happened she would be asking to be passed between them constantly.

 

“Let me up,” Bruce said as he gave the girl back.

 

Clark moved out of the way and Bruce pushed himself to his feet.

 

To his surprise he staggered. Instantly Clark was beside him, arm looped under his, holding him up.

 

“Hey, do you want to leave? It’s okay if you want to leave.”

 

“I’m not that drunk,” Bruce muttered.

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drunk at all,” Clark confided. “You sure you’re okay?”

 

“I’m fine, Clark I…” he felt dizzy standing and itched to sit back down in the alcove he’d created between the pavilion wall and the table. He must have had more than he thought… “Hell.”

 

“Hey,” the alpha kissed him. “It’s okay.”

 

“I don’t want them to…” he glanced over at Dick and Jason still dancing in the middle of the floor.

 

“They won’t notice,” Clark promised. “You’re my mate. This is our baby. We’re hugging,” he pulled him closer in a way that also propped him up. “Just a hug.”

 

Bruce kissed him before he realised what he was doing. Drawn in by the smell of the man and a tug of instinctual need.

 

“Dada!” Ellie cried in delight as she bounced between them. “Papa!”

 

“Aw! Yes! Money shot!” Wally – who had taken on the role of wedding photographer – appeared to snap a picture of them. “The Superbat family. That’s one for the memory book. This is—ek! Okay, bat glare alert. I’m going. I’m running.” He vanished only to appear at the other end of the pavilion to take a photo of Tim and Kon dancing; the omega standing on the alpha’s toes and both laughing at the unpicturesque grapple of bodies and knocking of knees.

 

Tim’s hair was long enough to be tied back at the nape of his neck and Conner hadn’t yet learnt that he needed to shave the underside of his jaw now that his full facial hair had come in. Despite it they both looked beautiful, flushed and happy. As they grinned for the camera, Martha and Alfred frolicked passed. The two elders easily the most spry and daring on the dancefloor.

 

Damian and Colin were creeping out from under the tables to stuff their pockets with food from the buffet.

 

Dick and Jason were still rocking back and forth in the middle of the room; oblivious to everything but each other.

 

His pack.

 

His family.

 

His everything.

 

He sighed and rested his forehead against Clark’s. “Let’s take Pup to bed.”

 

“Do you want to go to bed too?”

 

Again. “I’m not that drunk.” It was the truth. Despite it his legs were weak and wobbly under him as he walked out of the tent and into the eerily open air of the night beyond. The stars winked down at him and made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Itchy and uncomfortable.

 

He fortified himself against the urge to dash back inside and curl up back in the spot he’d found at the corner of the party. Instead he held tightly onto Clark, inhaling the man’s alpha aroma, and pulled his family not along the lit path through the gardens but straight across the lawn towards the dark shape of Wayne Manor.

 

The buzz in his blood made the journey seem both longer than it should and shorter.

 

When they made it to the foot of the building Clark wrapped an arm tightly around his middle and lifted them all up onto the bedroom balcony. Ellie slept in a nursey lying off the master suite – his parents’ bedroom and one he had refused to occupy until Ellie was born and the convenience of having an inbuilt nursery became too great to ignore. It had been strange deconstructing the mausoleum he had subconsciously made of the room but, in a way, it had also felt good. Final. Like he was putting something aside. He would never stop mourning his parents, never stop fighting to make the world a place in which they would not have died, but in taking the master bedroom he made the house his and not his father’s. In packing away their things he let them rest in peace.

 

Clark took the baby into the nursery, sang her a rhyme in a frequency Bruce couldn’t hear but had both of them giggling, and then kissed her goodnight. Bruce stepped forward to do the same. She smelt odd as his lips brushed against her scalp. Her scent still the same beautiful thing he remembered inhaling for the first time at her birth but somehow also jarring. As if some instinct was telling him he shouldn’t be around her right now.

 

He straightened, hugged his side, and picked his way back to the bedroom. Clark joined him there a minute later and gently touched Bruce’s chin to turn his face towards the light. “Your eyes are dilated,” the alpha said. “How much did you have?”

 

“I’m not that drunk,” he told him again. “I’m not.”

 

Clark didn’t press him but instead pulled him into a firm embrace. Lending comfort as Bruce worked through the strange mix of emotions the day had invoked. The content throb at seeing his family together and smiling. The strange joy watching the procedure of events. The aging regret as Dick and Jason both walked empty armed down the aisle. The small sting as Tim told Wally he was ready to go back to Boston. The warm content Ellie’s request of his embrace had brought. And finally the bittersweet feeling as he watched Dick and Jason dance.

 

It had been a beautiful day.

 

But also a painful one.

 

With shock he felt a couple of tears overspill his eyes. Nothing more. A simple physical reaction to the night. He hoped if he kept his face over Clark’s shoulder he wouldn’t notice. He’d put an obscene amount of perfumed deodorant on and the flowery order of chemically engineered lilacs crisscrossed his scent; cutting out any nuance that could betray excess pheromones which could indicate a less than ideal emotional state.

 

The last thing he’d wanted to do was ruin Dick and Jason’s day by showing up smelling stressed or unhappy. Dick being a beta wouldn’t likely pick up on it but Jason would… and Jason would take it personally.

 

If Clark noticed or not he never knew. The man kept holding him for a long time afterwards and Bruce found himself melting more and more into the man’s arms. Into his scent. When he finally drew back Clark was smiling softly. He’d left his glasses somewhere and his eyes sparkled unobstructed. It was all that was needed for Bruce to tug him forward, press his body against the alpha, and connect their lips. This kiss wasn’t like the one Wally captured. This was slower but also more explicit. Mouths open and tongues explored long ago conquered territory. As tender as it was keenly erotic.

 

Bruce opened his eyes to make sure Clark had closed the door to the nursery before reaching down to tug at the man’s belt.

 

The alpha drew back. “Hey, we don’t have to if you’re not feeling up to it.”

 

“Oh I’m _up_ for it, Kent,” he promised.

 

“But… are you su—?”

 

“I’m not _that_ drunk,” he said, frustrated.

 

“You staggered.”

 

“I…” he frowned and looked down. Couldn’t come up with a logical excuse for that one. “I’m not that drunk.”

 

“Okay,” Clark’s hands slipped down his body. “Okay. I…” and then they were kissing again.

 

It took a long time for them to work off their suits. Bruce was in a three piece beta cut. Clark in the first suit he owned that did nothing to hide the trim shape of his body; a simple sky blue shirt, brown blazer with elbow patches, and patterned tie. Always the farm boy.

 

And, he thought as Clark pulled out Bruce’s diamond cufflinks, he was always the going to be the billionaire. The differences between them as fascinating and yet as simple as they had always been.

 

Clark, as usual, first made love to his scars. Kissing, stroking, and licking each withered line as if it were as beautiful as unmarked skin.

 

The buckle of a faded burn on his ribcage, the pucker of Killer Croc’s teeth marks on his shoulder, and – as if it held no more or less meaning than the others – the soft pink line that had robbed him of his womb just above his groin.

 

It was one of his most painless scars. It didn’t tug, twinge, or ache like a lot of the others. But sometimes he thought about it. Sitting in his study or crouching on a building waiting for a gang of thugs to emerge. His mind caught on the line between his hips. Not coming to any conclusions. Not trying to. Just… thinking about it.

 

Thankfully Clark quickly moved on to a scar on his thigh, then one on his abs, and then – with no warning at all – he swallowed his cock.

 

Bruce hissed through his teeth and tangled his hand in Clark’s hair. But he didn’t urge him on.

 

The alpha blinked in surprise as Bruce’s cock slipped from his mouth. “Did I do something wrong?”

 

“Fuck me.”

 

“Now? We usually do this kind of stuff fir—”

 

“Now.”

 

He didn’t want to lie back and be sucked. He wanted to be fucked into oblivion. Or, fucked however Clark wanted. It didn’t matter. He just wanted Clark inside him. He wanted that closeness. That feeling. His mate under his skin, his body buzzing with their mixed hormones, his neck hurting from a fresh bite. That’s what he needed right now.

 

Clark climbed him, groaned as Bruce wrapped his legs around the man’s hips, and buried his face in Bruce’s neck. Not biting but just inhaling him at the point where his scent was the strongest.

 

Bruce hissed through his teeth as the man entered him. The feeling intimately pleasurable not because of the act itself but because his senses were consumed with the alpha above him. Clark’s scent. Clark’s weight. Clark’s cock…

 

“God,” the alpha breathed and threaded their fingers together. “How are you so _wet_?”

 

He tightened his legs around the man’s hips. “Come on.”

 

Clark thrust once, twice… on the third time he hit some place inside Bruce that triggered a flinch. That flinch turned into a spasm that greedily pulled the alpha in deeper, sent a surge of tingling blood to the aching tip of his cock, and rocked through his whole body. A violent shudder.

 

Clark paused and propped himself up on his elbows to study him with a frown. “Are you okay?”

 

“You didn’t hurt me,” Bruce promised him. Voice husky and head light as a second shudder went through him. “ _Fuck_ … fuck me.”

 

A strange look passed across Clark’s face. “Did you eat?”

 

“No.”

 

“How did the wine taste? Good?”

 

“Awful,” he answered and rolled his hips, relishing the heavy tight feeling of the other man inside him.

 

Clark gasped. “Ah, Bruce, hold on. I think…”

 

“Fuck me, Kent. I know you know how.”

 

The alpha groaned and – to Bruce’s horror – withdrew.

 

He sat up and stared as the man stepped away from the bed, his erection wet and bobbing in front of him.

 

“What are you doing?” A stab of panic. “Where are you going?”

 

“I think…”

 

Bruce’s whole body shuddered. Desperate to have the other man back inside him. “Do y— _ah_ —you want me to ride you or…?”

 

“No, Bruce. No. I…”

 

“We could mount. Like when I was pregnant.”

 

“That’s not what I…”

 

“I could suck you for a bit,” Bruce tried. He didn’t want to put Clark in his mouth just then. He wanted him inside him but if oral was a necessary step to getting what he wanted he was more than willing to do it. “Or you could suck me? You wanted to do that, didn’t you?”

 

“Bruce,” Clark said the word with more force than usual. “Listen to me. I think you’re in heat.”

 

He frowned. “You’d smell me if I were in heat.”

 

“I think I can,” the alpha’s voice pitched oddly. “You haven’t started scenting yet but I think it’s close. That deodorant makes it harder but it’s there.”

 

“Don’t be absurd, Kent. I don’t have the body parts.”

 

“You do. The body parts are ovaries. Your body doesn’t know you’re missing a uterus. And you know this.” Instantly he was in front of him checking his temperature. “You’re not thinking properly.”

 

He pushed him away. “My faculties are int—” another shudder went through him. This one with a fresh surge of urgent need. “ _Shit_ Clark, fuck me.”

 

“Oh God,” Clark looked horrified. “How much did you have to drink? It wasn’t that much was it? You were staggering because… But you _did_ drink. Oh God. You’ll dehydrate.” He was gone and back in a second with a massive jug of water. “Drink this.”

 

His stomach protested at the very sight of it. “Fuck me.” He said it in Batman’s voice this time. An order.

 

“Drink this,” Clark repeated. “All of it. Three times.”

 

“Three times?”

 

“I’ll refill it. Drink it or I won’t fuck you.”

 

Bruce peered up at the alpha. “That’s how you usually boss me around in heat is it? Withholding sex?”

 

The alpha blushed. “I… well… you’re usually not this _here_ when you’re in heat. I thought you’d left me for a bit there.”

 

 _“Left?”_ He snarled. “What’s that supposed to…” a flush of heat went through him. A wave of sensation not unlike an orgasm. Both fulfilling and wretchedly weakening.

 

With it came the first pheromones.

 

Clark’s neck turned red as he caught the shift in Bruce’s scent. “Oh hell.” The offered water shook. “Oh God. Oh fuck.”

 

For a moment Bruce was savagely proud of his body’s ability to disarm the other man. A primal feeling of power as he snared the alpha.Captured him in his allure like a spider captures a fly in her web. _Mate. Mine. More._

 

It was the raw energy behind that thought that snapped him back to full awareness. He blinked as with a second disorientating lurch he realised that the man was right. He was in heat.

 

“No. I… My heats usually hit me hard. They— _hmm_ ,” he hugged his side. “They’re all at once. Not…”

 

The man was breathing through his hand but seemed earnestly relieved to get something so coherent out of him. “Maybe your uterus did do something.”

 

Another, more likely, theory occurred to him. “Or maybe this is my last one.” If his heat was weaker than usual it suggested his body might be ramping down his hormones as a precursor to menopause. _His last heat._

 

“God, Bruce I… you smell really... What do you want to do?” He was still holding the water out to him. “You have suppressants in the cave. I can get you some O-12? Or do you need something stronger?”

 

Bruce didn’t bother telling the man that nothing below O-6 had ever been enough to quell his heat. He was a high level omega. An extreme high level. A couple of points off it being a legal disability. Losing his uterus didn’t change that. He just shook his head. “I don’t want suppressants, Clark. This is my last heat. My last.”

 

“Y-you don’t know that.” Clark’s eyes were turning feverish and shoulders shaking. “It could just be weaker b-because you don’t have a… oh God. You’re getting _worse_. How are you getting…? It could be normal in two months. We could plan for it. You wouldn’t be dehydrated or drunk.”

 

“I’m going to be forty eight in a month, Clark.”

 

Pleading. “Omegas can have heats in their fifties.”

 

He didn’t waste time telling him how rare that was. He could feel his heat building hot and lumpy inside him, prickling and burning under his skin. It might have come on slower but he had a feeling when it got started it would still be more than strong enough to wipe him out. And it would come… very soon.

 

He could feel himself getting wet enough for slick to start trickling out of him, feel his throat go dry, and hear the music of the wedding through the bolted window. Another dance. Faster this time. Wilder. It had a heavy beat. A _throb throb throb_ that went straight to his veins.

 

“Bruce?”

 

“I want… I want to do this,” he said. “I want to. Don’t you? It’d – _ah_ – be good when it starts up properly. It’ll – _hm_ – be fun.” He cocked a smile. “Don’t you want to do this one last time Clark?” The music kept pulsing. “One last dance?”

 

The alpha stared at him. “D-dance?”

 

He gave up trying to talk and instead took the jug of water out of Clark’s hand. Forced back his repulsion and consumed it. _He won’t fuck me unless. He won’t fuck me unless. He won’t…_ When he finished Clark disappeared and brought it back refilled. The second jug was harder than the first. By the third his whole body was buzzing with need and the reason why he didn’t just drop the bottle and climb onto the alpha’s lap was getting further and further away. Like a picture being drained of colour.

 

He was about to abandon the task when – somehow reading his mind – Clark climbed up onto the bed beside him and pulled him into a body. Holding him still and encouraging him to tip the content of the bottle down his throat.

 

“Hey, that’s good. Just one more. You’re doing so good.”

 

“Don’t praise me,” he rasped. But the words didn’t mean anything. His tongue on autopilot. His brain latched onto the sound of Clark’s approval and used it to put motive behind the action. He was making the alpha happy. The alpha would fuck him if he made him happy. He… _Fuck no, I’m not that far gone yet. I’m **not**._

 

But it worked. He finished the third jug, tossed it away before his mate could refill it again, and then the alpha hit him like a tidal wave. It was everything their coupling fifteen minutes ago wasn’t. Fast. Furious. Desperate.

 

“I know why you’re in heat,” Clark said as his hands slid over him. “You stopped breast feeding just over two months ago. That would have started your cycle again.” The man’s mouth found his nipple. Bit.

 

Bruce snarled and wrestled their bodies closer together, pulled them into alignment.

 

Then Clark was in him. Fucking him, filling him, and kissing him.

 

The taste of the alpha’s saliva robbed him of what little control he had left.

 

Bruce rolled so he was on top, pushed a hand against Clark’s throat to hold him down, and rode him. Fast, hard, and utterly necessary for survival. He could feel his heat creeping up his neck, fogging his brain, and making the explicitness of this event even better. How he could do anything but worship and be worshiped by the man under him he had no idea. How could he eat, sleep, or think when he could be doing this?

 

The alpha was talking but Bruce didn’t waste energy trying to understand what he was saying. It seemed tragically comical that his mate didn’t know what he should be doing with that magnificent body of his. That he wanted to waste time trying to figure out language when his cock was pistoning between them. A simple but amazing piece of him. Long, straight, and twitching where it would swell and lock them together.

 

He let his mind lock onto that knot. Let himself reveal at the idea of it. Anticipate the feel of it. Greedily grind down on the man to encourage it.

 

This sparked a tightening that spread through his entire body. A release both desperate and wanting. A feeling he didn’t identify as an orgasm until halfway through the experience.

 

He let out a strangled moan and slumped into the alpha.

 

His mate smelt good. Even better than usual. He basked boneless in that scent as the man rolled him onto the mattress and spooned in beside him. Re-entering him in a single thrust.

 

“So fucking hot when you come like that,” the alpha said. “So fucking hot. So fucking hot. You’re so fucking hot.”

 

In an estranged moment of clarity he realised that this was exactly what he needed. An escape wherein he wasn’t thinking about the bittersweet brutality of the day. Where he wasn’t watching the boys he remembered throwing mud at each other kissing on an altar. Where he wasn’t enjoying the now rare feeling of his pack being all together. A break. A time and space where higher reasoning was stripped away and the world narrowed down to him and his mate… and the need they shared.

 

It didn’t last long after that.

 

He lay on his side and shivered with pleasure as he felt Clark come inside him, flooding him with enough semen that it sloshed back and forth. It would have spilled out of him if the man’s cock hadn’t ballooned out. The size of the knot sending sparks of satisfaction dancing behind his eyes.

 

He shuffled his hips forward just to feel the painful pull of it. Just to know they were tied together and there was nothing in the world that would separate them. That idea as much as the fat rub of the man’s knot inside him had him moaning through a second spike of orgasm. A buzz of pleasure that throbbed inside him and sent a wave of heat across his skin.

 

“God Bruce…”

 

He tried to say something. Couldn’t find the words. Couldn’t make sense of anything but the feel of their connection and the sleepy weight of his own body.

 

A gush of alpha smelling breath over his cheek. “Did I ever tell you how perfect you are? Because you are. You’re utterly totally completely perfect.” The man uttered the last word as if it were sacred. A divine truth.

 

 _Too,_ Bruce wanted to say. _You too. I love you._ But he had a feeling Clark knew all that already.

 

Instead he ground sleepily back onto the cock behind him, enjoying the bloated weighty feeling of his body and the aching friction of their connection. Usually he would sleep when Clark’s knot was inside him. That was the normal response an omega gave an alpha. In heat things were a bit different. He slowed down, even dozed, but did not stop. The hormones in his blood were too high to be satisfied by a single round of sex. This mismatched levels didn’t help in that regard. Still, even though the fog of heat, he enjoyed these times. A slower beat. A place where things were – briefly – a bit softer. Simpler.

 

A time when the near painful need inside him stilled and he could just lie back – blissfully unaware of anything outside the bubble that was _them_ – and wonder how in the world he’d managed to find this mate. This alpha. This man.

 

For a time he drifted, then the urgent need came back and they fucked again, and then he wasn’t sure if it was his second, third, or forth time with a knot in him. It didn’t matter. His body was thrumming with lingering pleasure, insides stuffed with the other man, and mouth tasting of him. At some point Clark had taken him out of the room and put him in his downstairs nest. It was better here.

 

He hated windows when he was in heat… maybe he’d told Clark that.

 

The alpha touched him, kissed him, and fisted Bruce’s cock until he breathed through a gutting surge of sharp pleasure. Not as good as the feeling of being fucked but made better by the length inside him and the man’s hands which had continued to make their way up his body; tracing scars, thumbing nipples, and finally gently easing Bruce’s head to the side. Barring his omega gland.

 

Bruce purred in satisfaction as he felt the alpha’s teeth graze the hot sensitive spot under his jawbone. The knowledge that the man was marking him almost as erotic as the understanding that he was as addicted to him as Bruce was. That he craved their connection as much as Bruce did. That he was as locked into this wild beautiful ride as he was. _Mate. My mate._ _Alpha. My alpha._

_Clark. My Clark._

 

Then – almost of their own volition – the words finally found their way out of him. “Love you.”

 

He wasn’t aware enough to observe Clark’s reaction. Not with his eyes. But he could feel the exhale of air against his neck, smell the small sweet shift in his scent, and hear the simple joy in the man’s voice. “I love you too.” A pause. “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really not sure what I'm meant to say now.
> 
> I don't think there is anything to say but thank you. Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for pressing the kudos button a second time even thought you knew it wouldn't work. Thank you for editing and enthusing with me. Thank you for putting up with my temperamental writing. Thank you for lurking. Thank you for coming on this crazy long journey. Thank you for sticking with this series right till the end.
> 
> And above all thank you for being awesome.
> 
> It's been a great two and a half years. It really has. I can't tell you how much I think I've grown as a writer, how great it has been to meet and interact with people who've enjoyed my work, and how bittersweet it feels like now to realise I've come to the end. I feel a lot like Bruce did in this chapter actually. My baby is all grown up...
> 
> But she's not dead. A few people have approached me asking if they can write what ifs, missing scenes, or extra stories set in this universe. To them and to anyone else who might be interested my response is: HELL YEAH! If you want to write and make this world even bigger and better please do. I'm sure I'll love what you come up with. I'll even pop them in my INDEX [where people can find related stories written by myself an other people set in or inspired by this AU.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2738015/chapters/8692039) They're awesome.
> 
> I also know I didn't fill in all the gaps when writing this and as such I'm going to invite you guys to leave me prompts in the comments here or on my [tumblr](http://evilpixiea.tumblr.com/). I can't promise I'll fill them but if there is a lot of buzz, if one catches my attention, or if I can't quite let go of my baby I might just sneak in a wee one-shot here and there. Though, be warned, my internet is still down so response time to anything is really slow and I honestly may not be able to do anything around some of the other stuffI have going on. I really don't know.
> 
> Either way, please don't forget me! Send me messages! And fics! And omegas! And your love (because that is seriously the most wonderful thing in the world). I am working on a few different things right now as well as dealing with RL so I probably won't be much of a presence in fanfic world for a while but don't for a second think I've left fandom.
> 
> And - once again - thank you.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Never Let Go](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4353986) by [SticksandBones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SticksandBones/pseuds/SticksandBones)
  * [What is Missing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108177) by [Black_and_Blue_Hood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_and_Blue_Hood/pseuds/Black_and_Blue_Hood)
  * [Full Circle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6552997) by [SticksandBones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SticksandBones/pseuds/SticksandBones)




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